


The Nightmare Begins

by TheCalamity



Series: The Monsters Within [1]
Category: FF7, FFVII, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Complicated Relationships, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Drama, Everything Hurts, Experimentation, F/M, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Heartbreak, Horror, Human Experimentation, Love Triangles, Marriage, Medical Experimentation, Monsters, Origin Story, Pre-Game(s), Pregnancy, Serious, Shinra, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Suicide, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, bioethics, creature transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:22:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 56,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8201843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCalamity/pseuds/TheCalamity
Summary: "Emotions are a funny thing. Do you know how they work?” Hojo watched the Turk writhe on the floor, crying out guttural sobs of agony.Flesh that was not his own bubbled up from within him as his skin split, dark and wet. “When a person feels something particularly strongly, it triggers a reflex, fight or flight. Pupils dilate, heart rate increases. A relic of our ancestors. To give us a physiological advantage to survive a predator. To run faster, harder, longer. To feel, Vincent, is to exist.” Vincent’s form was no longer his own-- a hulking creature, fur matted in blood. Claws and teeth and such an unnatural shape bipedal but nothing human. “It was a simple override of this response, with some additional tweaking. You used to hide your feelings, dog. Not anymore. You feel, and you become. But now... you are the predator. Just like you always were. Gallant hero…?” Hojo grinned wickedly. “You are but a Gallant Beast.”  Vincent Valentine's origin story. Explores Sephiroth's conception and birth, Lucrecia's motives and the reasons for and mechanics of Vincent's limit breaks. [Does not consider the FFVII compilation outside of the original game as firm canon.]





	1. Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crimbly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimbly/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [all art here art by me]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

_Cold_

 

 

 

Vincent sat beneath a window in the kitchen of the ShinRa mansion, sliced into thirds by bands of late morning light. Lucrecia was, uncharacteristically, sleeping late. It annoyed him. Partly because he disliked wasting time, partly because he missed her. He took the opportunity to thoroughly clean his guns. Other artifacts of his identity scattered the table, told the only story about himself he wanted told. A tie clip, a holster, and a company issued identification card.

 

_Vincent Valentine - Department of Administrative Research - ShinRa Electric Power Company_

 

The sleeves of his pressed and starched shirt had been rolled up to his elbows, a navy suit jacket folded over the back of his chair. His chin length hair had been trimmed short at the sides and parted to the left, a curtain to one of his dark eyes. He was handsome in a way that didn’t seem quite fair; high, sharp cheekbones and an chiseled nose, clean shaven and impeccably neat.

 

As handsome as he was, there was something inherently _other_ about him. He was polite enough to seem just the other side of suspicious, quiet enough to come off as eerie. And in all things, relentlessly, unshakably calm. In casual situations he sat too straight, moved too mechanically. He didn’t participate in conversations without a direct invitation, didn’t do much of anything without instruction. And he loved her so.

 

Lucrecia smiled at him when she entered, the white of her lab coat setting off the golden tones of her hair. She had a brightness about her that seemed inextinguishable, even in her current state, puffy eyed and sleepy. “Good morning, Vincent.”

 

He had meant to return the greeting but stood instead, motionless and awkward for a moment before he realized she had no intention to brief him. He moved to pull a chair out from the table, gestured for her to sit. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?” Vincent stepped back from the chair, but did not return to his seat. Or to doing.

 

Lucrecia smoothed her skirt against her knees when she sat. She knew the inquiry had been a straightforward one; Vincent didn’t have it in him to play with subtleties. Still, the question brought heat into her cheeks. She had crept to his room when the rest of the mansion was long asleep, twisting bodies under sheets, promises that didn’t need words. She wet her lower lip, a preparation, looked thoughtful. Whatever it was she was thinking, she waved it away. “Not the best. A lot on my mind, I suppose. Stress. It’s okay, I’m just having a hard time waking up.”

 

Vincent returned to his seat only to immediately stand back up. “I, uh, I'll get you some tea.” He had already prepared a kettle, kept it warmed on the stove. Lucrecia set her chin atop her fist, watched his back, long and lean beneath the white of his shirt and the suspenders that branched over his shoulders.

 

He rummaged for a specific teacup, painted cream and gold with small roses. It was the one he had seen her use the most, assumed it had some sentimental meaning. He never asked. The sleep though, the stress, he did. “Would you like to talk about it?”

 

Lucrecia smiled sleepily. “Talk? You mean me yammer away, while you sit there with that stoic, sullen look on your face and stare off at nothing?”

 

Vincent was such a gentle man, soft and quiet and completely at odds with his profession. It was hard for her to imagine him being what he was. Once, he had caught a brown recluse in the windowsill, coaxed it into his hand and carried it out into the night. Most would have just killed it.  Sometimes she would watch him practicing his marksmanship in the space that used to be a yard behind the mansion. He never flinched when he shot, his handsome strange face never telling. She had wondered if he look that way when one of his bullets ripped into flesh and bone instead of paper targets.

 

Always so serious. But she could pull smiles out of him, big, lopsided honest smiles. She had even gotten him to laugh once, or twice, depending on who was asked. Whatever he thought he was, she thought he was more. And she loved him so. Lucrecia watched him as he washed the cup in the sink, treated it with the care of a surgeon when he dried it along with his hands. “There are other cups, Vincent. That whole cupboard is full of them.”

 

Vincent shrugged as he poured her tea. He returned to the table, set the cup down carefully in front of her. “You like that one.” He sat quietly, picked up the gun and insert his little finger into the chamber. He closed the action, pulled the trigger.

 

_Click._

 

Lucrecia looked behind her, scoot her chair closer to the table, then closer still. She leaned in, folded her hands in her lap, kept her voice low. “Vincent? Let’s… get away from here.”

 

“Alright… a moment to finish, please. I’ll take you for a walk.” The response was delayed, but he offered her a weak, polite smile as compensation.

 

“That’s not what I meant.” Lucrecia set her fingers atop his wrist, something timid in her movements. “I meant… really get away. Leave.”

 

Vincent paused when she touched him, lift his eyes to meet hers, caught against them. He spoke the word as if it had been poisoned, a beautiful bloom and toxic to its core. “… _Leave_?”

 

Lucrecia smiled, unsure as her hands had been. “Yes. You and I. Together.”

 

“…Where?”

 

“Somewhere else. Kalm, maybe. Somewhere off the coast of Junon. Do you know how to fish? Wutai! I don’t know. Away from here. Away from this dusty gloomy house. I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”

 

The confession hit him sideways, caught him completely by surprise. He hadn’t known what to expect her to say, but knew it was not that. His face remained unchanged. Vincent set the gun slowly against the table, pushed a fall of black fringe from his face to make it clear she had his full attention.

 

“I don’t know if I want to _be_ this anymore.” Any cheer that had been present when she greet him had crumbled away. A hint of desperation had taken its place.

 

“This? You mean… The Jenova Project?” Vincent did not move. “Lucy. You’ve been hand picked by Professor Gast as a pivotal part of this research.” He shifted in his seat, lost for words. He felt them, all the intention, all the words of wisdom and comfort and love he was supposed to have but somehow did not. The things that would make her feel better, chase off her doubts and fears, but any attempt to bind them into something coherent and meaningful turned them to dust. “This is… the result of so much hard work. You are a brilliant scientist… and after this… your career will never be the same. You won't have the problems you have now.”

 

Lucrecia pulled her hands away from him, a flicker of annoyance. She replaced the space where his wrist had been with her teacup, picked at a chip. “What if I don’t want to be? Have you ever seen something, something so powerful that it’s there every time you shut your eyes? That it becomes an overlay on everything else you look at?”

 

Vincent’s face was cold and expressionless, but his heart now hammered in his ears and throat. _Yes. You._

 

“I am the only woman of serious merit in the Science Department. At ShinRa, even. I know that. But everything I do I have to do twice as hard, and it’s a constant battle to prove myself. I know I don’t have tenure, but I’ve done more than enough to prove myself. Hojo… he believes in me. Sometimes I think he even _respects_ me. But he’s always on me about ‘controlling my emotions,’ about ‘volatility of feeling being a threat to unbiased work’ and…” Tears had bloomed against her soft doe eyes. “Maybe he’s right. I don’t want to _see_ things anymore.”

 

Vincent could feel warmth rush to his face and worried over the color that must have patched his cheeks. Something in him liked seeing her all teary eyed. It was nothing malicious. It was endearing. Lucrecia was endlessly emotive and every single second of it was genuine. Her constant emoting made up for his lack of it, a clean and concise balance. Two halves of a whole.

 

“Do you like doing this, Vincent? Being a Turk? Do you like the Department of Administrative Research?”

 

Vincent looked down to the gun, stark against the white linen of the tablecloth. _I like being near you._ “It is my job. It is who I am. It is important to me.”

 

Lucrecia abandoned the teacup, grabbed his hands in both of hers. She pulled them towards her with more force than was necessary. No tears had fallen, but they were visible— fat glistening beads trapped against her lashes. “Do you love me?”

Vincent spoke before thinking. “ _Yes_.”

 

She squeezed his hands. “Then let’s leave. Right now.”

 

Vincent looked over his shoulder, then back to her. The corner of his lips had twitched upward, something almost resembling a smile. There was an allure in her proposition, the concept of acting on impulse and emotions a dangerous intoxication. “…They’ll think we have done something wrong.”

 

The desperation in Lucrecia’s face had bled into her voice. “Maybe we _have_.”

 

"I have a weird… feeling about this project. I was so excited to get here and now… Oh, I don't know. Something feels _off._ It's consuming. And it's got nothing behind it, no data. No facts. It’s so stupid. But I can't shake it. And now it's spilling into everything, and something changed…” She took a deep breath and held it. She tried to let her words go, the ones she wanted to say, but something else came out instead.

 

“The time to go is now. And if we don't, I don't think we'll have another chance.”

 

“Lucrecia… I…”

 

“No more sneaking around. No more pretending. We won’t have to worry about our relationship affecting our positions, compromising our… we’ll get married! Elope!” Lucrecia switched tactics. Vincent’s ghost of a smirk had lost it’s skeptical edge, transformed into a real smile. Slight, but present. “And…” her tone shifted again, now weighted and cautious. This was the part that mattered, the entire source of her panic, of her cautious plead to leave. “…We’ll have a family.”

 

Vincent’s face fell back to its default, a sculpture of indifference. He had caught the change in her voice.

 

“If we have a boy, we’ll name him after your father. And if we have a girl we’ll—”

 

“—I don’t want children.” Vincent's response was severe, enough that his face finally betrayed him with the shadows of something dark. He pulled his hand from hers, returned his attention to his gun. He picked it up, loaded the magazine, pulled the slide and let it snap back, metal on metal stinging the silence between them. The idea had hit him somewhere painful, picking at scars that had sealed over hurts still festering beneath.

 

_Hojo is correct, Lucrecia. Feelings are a threat to unbiased work._

 

He had slipped up with her too many times. He was open with her in a way he wasn't anywhere else, even if she didn’t see it. And though his feelings were often wordless, they coursed through him, twisted in his gut. The secret moments they spent together, apart from their roles as staff and security were the most precious to him in his life. But their exterior relationship, the professional one that ignored their personal affair had a safety to it, predictable and clean. He could keep her safe from everything.

 

Especially himself.

 

Lucrecia shoved her hands into her lap, reeled. She had practiced this conversation over and over in her mind, sacrificed almost a week’s worth of sleep to it. Vincent almost always kept his opinions to himself unless specifically pressed. His response had been so firm and finite— a reaction she did not expect. She sunk back into her chair, defeated.

 

Vincent wouldn’t look at her. “Abandon the Jenova Project? Get… married? Have children? This isn't you, Lucy. Throwing away everything you have done, everything you have yet to do…”Vincent shook his head. “What did Hojo say to you now? That you should be in a kitchen instead of a lab? You aren’t some country housewife who exists only as an extension of her children. A _mother_? You’re an accomplished _scientist_. You are Gast’s prodigy, brilliant and ambitious and… Whatever self-doubts you are having… whatever Hojo has said to make you…” He finally allowed himself to look at her again, a gesture of sincerity. “You _belong_ here. You belong beside Gast on the Jenova Project. And I belong here too, ensuring you are able to do what you are meant to.” Vincent flipped the safety on the gun. And on himself.

 

She had done what she always did, slid herself under his skin, washed over him with her warmth in a way that almost felt intrusive. He did not want her in those parts. Emotions made things sloppy, careless. There was nothing in the world he would have wanted more than to run away with her like foolish young lovers drunk on the lust of being in love. Denounce the ShinRa, fill her with doe eyed daughters. No more secrets. No more killing. No more reality. But that was selfish, stupid. And whatever had prompted her to find any appeal at all in the childish ideas would soon pass.

 

Even if they did not, ShinRa Electric was was not an entanglement they could detach from. The mega-corporation had stated as a weapons manufacturer and quickly became part of everything else. It was a conglomerate, ever expanding. The ability to convert the natural current of the planet, mako, into an energy source to replace coal had changed the face of the entire world. If anything, ShinRa would become even more transparent, an invisible omnipresence.

 

Leaving was simply not possible. Lucrecia had access to the highest levels of research in the company’s most critical department.  If she had tried to leave with that kind of knowledge, she would become another target for the Turks to eliminate. There was nowhere to go. He did not fault her for her oversight. It was his job to know these elements of ShinRa, not hers. Vincent had disposed of others like her himself, others who knew too much and wanted more.

 

The fact he had even considered for a moment, indulging her request shamed him. His feelings had almost put her in real danger. So he shut himself down, shut her out.

 

Lucrecia’s tears finally fell freely, and Vincent felt a stab of remorse for ever having enjoyed them.

 

“This isn’t about… this is… sometimes we don’t have a choice in what we want!” She pushed her tears off her face with the heel of her hand, embarrassed and flustered. “Do you even know what we are doing here? What we are _actually_ doing?”

 

“I am given enough information to do my duties.”

 

“Don’t you care? Don’t you want to know?!”

 

“…No. It is not my business. My job is to protect the perimeter and the personnel involved in this project.”

 

She slammed her hands against the tabletop and pushed off from the chair behind her. The scrape of the chair legs against the floor sounded almost perverse. “Why are you always so damn _cold_?!”

 

Vincent did not look up at her. Instead he opened the magazine again and slid another bullet inside. He only raised his eyes when he heard the quiet padding of stocking footsteps, but aside from the glance of notation, he did not react. Vincent stood, strapped on his holster. “I’ll escort you on a walk. The fresh air may help clear your head.”

 

Lucrecia swiped up the teacup off the table, sloshed it’s contents directly into his face. Vincent didn’t flinch as the tea caught him in the brow, spilt down his nose and dribbled off his chin.

 

“You don’t care about anything!” Lucrecia tossed the cup to floor, where it cried apart into jagged porcelain shards. Regret almost took her, but she stepped backward, fists balled at her sides.

 

Vincent looked a pathetic contradiction, standing so formally with his crisp white collar and yoke of his shirt dark with wet. The black of his styled hair now stringy and dripping against the left side of his face.

 

“I care about keeping you _safe_.”

 

“That’s right. I'm sure you do. Because it’s your _job_. Go to hell!” Lucrecia spun on her heels and dart out of the kitchen, almost colliding into the man who lurked in the doorway.

 

 

 


	2. Reactor

CHAPTER TWO

_Reactor_

 

 

 

Interesting." Hojo moved his mug of coffee to the side, braced for Lucrecia's impact. His movements were graceful, something that was almost comically at odds with his ever present abrasive demeanor. He looked as thorny as his personality would suggest. Hojo was thin and sharp, with hands that resembled the roots of some ancient tree. Wutainese, his glossy black hair was worn in a low and loose gather, just past his shoulders. It was not a fashion statement, but one of practicality. Hair cuts and styling took time.

 

"Oh! Hojo!" Lucrecia covered her mouth with both hands, blushed so hard her face went solidly red. "I'm so sorry I… didn't see you, I—“

 

“—Is everything alright?" Hojo glanced at Vincent who stood straight and dripping, then back to Lucrecia. She bobbed her head with vigor, continued to do so long after she had made her point.

 

"I… Everything is fine. I… Vincent…" She passed a loaded look to the Turk across her shoulder, fought away the urge to rush to him with a towel, to blot away the tea and her choices all the same. "I was… I wanted to go to the reactor alone this morning. It's a beautiful day, and I wanted some space to think. Vincent insisted on accompanying me. I guess I got insulted and over reacted."

 

Hojo raised a brow, swept over her with a disapproving look. "I should say so. The Turk is doing what it does. Following orders. The mountain is not safe, and you know better.”

 

Lucrecia took exception to this. She folded her arms defiantly across her chest, narrowed her eyes. "You go alone all the time. So does Professor Gast!"

 

"And I am not a young woman prone to fits of impulse. Do you really think anyone should take your word of maturity into serious consideration with displays like this?” Hojo held up a hand to silence her with a gesture before she could respond. "Really, Lu, as talented and bright as you are, you are becoming a liability. Perhaps you are not ready to be on such a strenuous assignment. I know we have been here for over a year, but we have much yet to do. If you are unable to handle the challenges of this sort of environment, perhaps you should return to Midgar." Hojo cupped his hand across her shoulder, gave it a pat. “You can record the data we gather here back at ShinRa, keep up the lab. I hear they’ve put some moron in charge back there. He has probably killed all of my plants.”

 

“Please… no!” Lucrecia turned to Vincent, a pleading, hopeless look distort her face. She had wanted so desperately a confirmation that he loved her, that his feelings for her went beyond a bored bodyguard passing time. She had gotten an answer, but not the one she had wanted. He loved his job, his guns, the ShinRa. He had rejected her, dismissed her honest vulnerability as immature daydreaming. She refused for Hojo and Gast to dismiss her too.

 

Vincent, ever loyal, played his role. “I upset her.”

 

Hojo smirked. "Clearly."

 

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t enough. Vincent dabbed his sleeve across his cheek. “She… wanted to go. I would not let her.” That wasn’t exactly a lie either.

 

Hojo tipped his chin to Vincent, a silent nod of approval. “And he was correct in doing so. Do not fault a dog for doing only what it was trained to do.” Hojo removed his hand from her shoulder. “In any case, you are late. Again. We’ve been waiting for you. Keep your tea in your cup from now on. No more outbursts.”

 

“Yes. Of course.” Lucrecia clasped her hands together, dipped her knees in an excessive display of gratitude. She had to force herself not to break into a run once she passed by Hojo, took slow and deliberate strides to the front door.

 

Vincent shadowed her dutifully, but kept his distance, gave her space. Hojo quickened his pace to come up beside him when they poured out into the spring sunlight, climbed down the crumbling stone steps. It was rare that the two men spoke.

 

“Curious.” Hojo walked with his hands crossed at the wrists behind his back, hunched forward. A stark contrast to Vincent’s straight and hyper-alert strides. “How is it that they trained you?”

 

Vincent remained silent.

 

“Beyond the weapons, the military nonsense. Any idiot with eyes can be taught to pull a trigger enough times for acceptable accuracy. I saw you take that cup directly to the face. You didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. …Fascinating. Gast was good friends with your father. I spent some time with him myself, Valentine. He often spoke of you. He worried after you, quite a lot. You caused him a great deal of distress. Very problematic, were you not?” Hojo glanced up to Vincent’s unchanging face. A meanness had crept into his voice. “Because if I remember correctly, you were quite… troubled. He called it _sensitive_.”

 

Hojo stopped walking, the sound of his dress shoes on the gravel path grating to a halt. “You aren't like the others. …What did they do to you, Turk?”

 

Vincent acknowledged Hojo with only an empty, side-eyed glance as he continued silently after Lucrecia.

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

The reactor was an ugly thing, built for function with no regard for aesthetics. A looming, abstract structure of metal of beams and bones, accent by fluorescent floodlights. Even in the bright, cheerful daylight it looked sinister, a festering sore on the beautiful mountain landscape.

 

Lucrecia had started up the steps, both men still trailing several yards behind her. She stopped just outside the entrance, leaned against a guard rail to catch her breath. She cupped her mouth to carry a shout. “I may get emotional,” Lucrecia smirked between puffs, “but at least I’m not a boring, stuffy, slow old man!”

 

Something passed behind her, a quick smear of motion, a blur. Before she could even think to identify it, a man laced his arm around her shoulders. He locked an elbow against her squirming, pulled the edge of a hunting knife up against her throat. She gasped, tore at his forearms, writhed against him. “Hey! Let go!”

 

“You fucking ShinRa scum! We won’t stand for this!” The man squeezed her harder, pushed the edge of the knife tight across her neck. “The reactor is going down! Hand over the keys, and I'll—”

Lucrecia didn’t even hear it. The knife dropped first. Then his arms uncoiled, slid across and down her chest. He crumpled behind her unceremoniously. It was over as quickly as it had began. Lucrecia looked behind her to the man that now lay motionless against the metal mesh. Her processing of the attack lagged, caught on the man's face. A person. The man was a _person_. Light haired, short and scruffy atop his head and chin.

 

A lifetimethat wasn't hers flashed through her thoughts; _happy birthday - I promise - a secret inside joke._ _I wish, I hope, I…_ He had bright blue eyes, open and vacant and skyward. A bullet had passed exactly center between his eyebrows, left a clean and unassuming hole. Freckles. Laugh lines. But the blood that poured between the open metal from the back of his head, spattered against the ground below promised his death.

 

It sounded like rain.

 

Lucy spun to face the others as terror and confusion overtook her face. Vincent held up his empty hand to her, a non-verbal command to stay still. He was efficient and fluid as he moved up the steps, swept the perimeter. It had only been one. He jogged back around when he was certain, took the steps two at a time to Lucrecia and holstered his gun. “Are you hurt?”

 

He did not dare touch her in front of Hojo, or even reveal the depth of his concern. He could feel the pound of his heart through the whole of him, thrashing so hard he worried someone might notice. Vincent had killed many people, many times. Some he sniped down, some he exchanged open fire with, some he killed in melee. But he had never been afraid before. It embarrassed him. He did not want to shame her, or himself.

 

Lucrecia took a large step back from the body, as if she expected it would somehow rise to grab her again. Nobody spoke as Hojo climbed the steps to join them, gave a somber nod then stepped over the man to continue to the reactor entrance.

 

“…You… _killed_ him.” Lucrecia looked at Vincent, a creep of something she didn't know how to identify. She knew what he did, but she had never seen him do it. Paper targets, sky-eyed men. All the same.

 

“He did exactly what he is here to do,” Hojo insert coldly. “And you should be thankful that he was present. Let this be a reminder to you the next time you throw a tantrum over being escorted. There are dangerous things in these mountains beyond the creatures that dwell here.”

 

“Who was he? Why would he…” Lucrecia tried to stay calm, tried to inhale through her nose and exhale between her lips without being obvious. She had promised no more outbursts, even justified ones. The dead man stared at the sky, and for a moment, Lucrecia wished she believed in heaven.

“…An eco-terrorist, probably.” Vincent shrugged, nonchalant.

 

“Small minded, backwater spiritual-folk. They object to the building of a reactor on supposedly ‘sacred’ land, though they have no idea what it is or how it works. They believe that the Lifestream is a spiritual current, not a elemental one. Scientific progress makes many things. Friendship is often not one of them.” Hojo looked down in disgust at the body. “No matter. This one will trouble us no more.”

 

Lucrecia looked up at Hojo, her eyes damp and wild. “He said… ‘we’… are there… more of these people?”

 

“Most certainly. We have been fortunate this is the first encounter so far. The remote location of the reactor is a deterrent. This was probably a pilgrimage for this man. Some attempt to find purpose in his existence. Yes. There will be more.” Hojo produced a keycard from his lab coat pocket, swiped it against the door. Once activated, he punched keys on a number pad with a knuckle. Lucrecia hesitate before venturing into the airlock, her attention lingering on the body that was once someone, and now was nothing.

 

Vincent glanced down at her, pushed away the urge to comfort her in the only way he knew he how, with actions. To hold her, kiss the part of her hair, be close. “…He was alone.” Vincent offered instead. It came out far more factual than comforting. He tried again, this time with a bit more warmth. “Only one set of footprints.” His fingertips brushed the small of her back as he ushered her into the reactor. The door hissed closed behind her, leaving him outside with the body.

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent was reading beneath a pool of lamplight when Gast knocked at his door. “I’m sorry to intrude. I know you don’t get a lot of time to yourself.”

 

“It’s not an intrusion. This is what I am here to do. I’ve already filed the report on the fatality. The body was dealt with.” Vincent set the book down and stood, awaited orders.

 

Gast had a kind, weathered face. He wore a mustache and small rectangular glasses that rode on the bridge of his nose, too small for his face. His hair was a mess of brown, a creep of gray at the temples. He was not a handsome man, but he was a charismatic one. And though he was only a handful of years older than Hojo, he always looked grandfatherly, friendly and warm. Gast was the sort of man who looked like he was always on the verge of telling some long winded, fantastical story. He often was.

 

Gast smirked at Vincent, who stood stoically at attention. “No need for so much formality with me, Vincent. Relax. Please. You’re making me uncomfortable.”

 

Vincent's shoulders slacked slightly, but the rest of him did not. Gast sighed between the crack of a smile and decided to let the Turk's best effort pass without protest.

 

“Lucrecia is… She’s pretty shaken up by what happened today at the reactor. She's trying to play it off since Hojo scolds her so much about being emotional. This is a time being anxious is quite merited, but I heard something to do with you taking a bath in earl grey this morning.” Gast paused to chuckle, shook his head at Vincent's somber, straight face.  “Ahh, poor girl is so spooked. And to tell you the truth, I am too. I think she’d feel much better if you sat in on dinner with us. Having you around would help. Especially after that display of exceptional marksmanship, so I’m told.”

 

“Any idiot with eyes can be taught to pull a trigger enough times for acceptable accuracy,” Vincent echoed Hojo's earlier comment, a statement of fact. It had been meant as an insult, but Vincent agreed.

 

“Oh lighten up. C’mon. She needs you.”

 

Vincent felt a smile lift his face. He hadn't meant to, surprised it had made it's way through. It was small, but Gast caught it. He grabbed Vincent’s shoulder, shook it far too vigorously. “Ah-hah… and there it is! I’ve seen the way you look at her. Can’t blame you, either. She’s something special.”

 

Vincent looked to his shoes. "She is exceptional."

 

“Hah! Look at you blush. You look like a very grumpy tomato. C’mon, Vincent, let's go get some food. Can't promise it will be any good, since I cooked tonight. And Lucy… well. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

When the pair entered the dining room, Hojo and Lucrecia were already entangled in a lively conversation. She paused to smile at Vincent, though disappointment wiped it away when the Turk sat in an extra dining chair near the doorway, left the table to the scientists.

 

“Gast,” Lucrecia leaned in to peer around Hojo, “I’ve been thinking about something. We know that the Cetra were… human, correct?”

 

“Yes. The Cetra would be genetically classified as homo sapiens. They were the first race, evolving their own unique genetic traits, the same as other surviving races today. The difference is that those genetic elements varied a bit more beyond the phenotypical traits we are used to. The Cetra were linked, somehow, very closely with nature. They had an uncanny ability to predict weather patterns, to find water sources.” Gast speared a chunk of meat on the trines of his fork.

 

“Because of this, they were a nomadic people. They knew that farming in one location too long was bad for the land. Knew how to avoid natural disasters. When evolution branched out and formed our ancestors— the ones without this bond to Gaia, they settled. Built villages, towns. The Cetra began to run out of places untouched by civilization. And the settlers changed things too, polluted rivers and streams, generated waste, over hunted and farmed fished.”

 

Gast shoved the morsel in his mouth, continued to talk as he chewed it, much to the annoyance of Vincent. “What we don’t know is what caused the sudden shift from a population Cetra to well, us. Hopefully, Jenova will tell us that.”

 

Lucrecia’s eyes sparkled in the dim ambient light cast around the dining room from the chandelier . “If… we could somehow harness that genetic link the Cetra had with the planet… we could change the world. We could save thousands of lives from natural disasters. Imagine, if we could accurately predict tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis. Think of the impact it would have on the food supply. We could predict crop yields and know how much to store, we could wipe out hunger. We could find other sources for clean energy and—”

 

Hojo sneered. “—we would make ShinRa very, very rich.”

 

Lucrecia hesitated, proceeded with a slow caution. “Could… could we _make_ another Cetra?”

 

Gast put down his fork, narrowed his eyes. “What are you getting on about, Lucy?”

“If the dna of the Cetra is so closely related to the dna of modern humans… couldn’t we… hypothetically…”

 

Gast frowned, picked up his fork again and tapped the handle against his chin. “Create another Cetra? Biologically? Hypothetically, yes. However, we would have to do extensive, extensive testing. This sort of thing breaks every single ethical code ever conceived. Our research here concerns identifying and replicating the Cetra’s ability to locate mako wells. ”

 

Hojo shrugged. “Nobody accomplished great advances in science without taking great risks. Lucrecia has an interesting hypothesis.”

 

“Interesting, yes. But we are not even absolutely certain what the Jenova specimen actually is.”

 

“With all due respect Gast, we’ve been examining the dna for over a year. The genetic profile is most certainly human. If anything, it is the missing link between the Cetra and our ancestors.” Hojo raised his glass, took a small thoughtful sip.

 

Lucrecia looked to Vincent who sat motionless near the door. His elbows were on his knees, fingers interlocked, bent over on himself himself. With his head down, she could not see his face. She wondered if he was listening, what he was thinking. His cold, harsh tone echoed fresh and wounding in her memory.

 

 

“ _I don’t want children.”_

 

 

She stared at him intensely and with purpose, hoped to bore a hole into him, hoped he would feel her presence focused entirely on him, look up to her. Meet her eyes, look at her in that way he did that said more than words could. _I'm here_. _Everything will be okay_. He did not.

 

Lucrecia pulled her lower lip between her teeth. _He doesn’t care about any of this. He is only here because he’s been told to be._

 

She cupped her hand against her belly beneath the table, returned her attention to Gast. “All of this aside… the bioethics and the… if we were somehow able to create a modern Cetra… we could change the whole world for the better, right?”

 

Gast smiled. “Big dreams. You have such a tender heart, Lucy.”

 


	3. Warm

CHAPTER THREE

_Warm_

 

 

Lucrecia performed the test again, for the ninth time in just as many days. Each time she looked at the thin paper strips lined with blue bands, her identity as a scientist pit against her identity as a person. She found it unfair there was such dissonance in it, mourned that they were simply parts that seemed not to fit into a whole. Hojo was solid. So was Gast. Even Vincent. And each time she looked, she was hopeful for some different result, one that didn't change everything. She resented the testing as much as what it revealed, about new circumstances and about herself.

 

She had made it to the Jenova Project on blood and sweat and tears. On endless sacrifices and so much fight. The atmosphere in the Science Department would have ground down a weaker woman into the sort of thing they thought a weaker woman should be. The endless patronizing, the constant condescending. Time wasted on scrutinization nobody else was subject too, theories and suggestions and hours of work simply dismissed until Hojo or Gast said the same. She had been the one chosen for the project by Gast over all of her other peers. And she was here to run tests on the Jenova specimen, not herself.

 

Gast and Hojo had seen something in her, beyond her gender and her youth. They had seen her ambition, the curious lust and love for knowledge, and her easy, if a bit naive, intelligence.

 

Why then, did she feel so stupid?

 

Lucrecia tossed the test strip into a small wastebasket beside her desk, flung herself backward onto the bed. The moon was nearly full in the clear dark sky, poured milky streams of light through the windows. She replayed the conversation she had with Vincent that morning, cringed at the reality of her actions and all of her missteps so suddenly apparent.

 

She was at the threshold of the biggest advance of her career, the point that would separate her from the rest, prove her worth. If Gast and Hojo found out…

 

Lucrecia tugged at the blanket, twist herself in it as if that would prompt her body to obey her logic and go to sleep. She could try to talk to Vincent again. Heed the advice of Hojo, shelve her emotions and present the data. She practiced the monologue in her mind:

 

“ _Vincent, I'm pregnant. I know you don't want children. And I know you don't think I'd be a good mother, but I want to be. Just like I've always wanted to be a scientist. I've worked so hard to be one, and I will work just as hard to be the other. If Gast and Hojo find out, I am likely to be removed from the Project. I have fought my whole life to be here— to prove that I deserve it, prove the idea that being a woman in no way impacts my function as a scientist. Except now, it does, doesn't it? And what little respect they have for me to be serious and devoted to my duties and future with the Science Department will come into question. We were assigned here to work, not fall into a romance. Maybe your job too, when our unauthorized relationship comes to light. Being a Turk means everything to you, doesn't it? Will you be in trouble? You are so afraid to disappoint Veld. We could leave before we are made to go. We could…”_

 

Vincent was a man of duty before anything else. It was his quiet self-righteousness that grated so badly against Hojo, his unyielding devotion to some moral code that nobody understood but him. Vincent would squeeze the life out of a material smuggler with his bare hands, crack apart a sector gang leader's head with a baseball bat, but would crumble in shame if he missed holding a door open for a lady. He would accept her pregnancy because that was the thing he was _supposed_ to do, the _right_ thing, the _honorable_ thing. Trapped and resentful and…

 

She imagined his face, unfeeling, unchanging. Whatever he felt or thought locked away. Except the severity of his response, the finite and harsh way he had said he did not want children. And in her mind’s eye, Vincent's face became the face of the man who had attacked her, staring empty and dead into the sky, a bullet hole between his eyes.

 

Hojo’s voice echoed within her. _“Do not fault a dog for doing only what it's been trained to do.”_

 

Lucrecia grabbed her pillow, smashed it into her face, a thoughtless gesture, a physical action to smother her thoughts. It did nothing to calm or comfort her. She tossed the pillow and sat, raked her fingers against her scalp. If she were to terminate the pregnancy, she'd have to do it alone without anyone knowing, and better yet take a leave from Nibelheim. This was the most logical choice, but considering it made it clear that it was not the one she wanted. There was something appealing in the duty of being someone's wife, in being a doting mother— the things Vincent had so bluntly told her she was not.

 

Women were dismissed and disrespected for trying to have male equivalent careers and lives. They were also dismissed and disrespected the same for fulfilling traditional roles. Both were important. Both were relevant. Contributing to the world by ushering in considerate, thoughtful, intelligent people— the sort of people who had been taught equality and respect for all, was as valid a choice as contributing to research.

 

It felt impossible to see a world in which she could be both, prodigal young scientist with a baby on her hip. Unless…

 

She stood quickly, a decisive maneuver, and retrieved the strip from the trash.

 

Her pregnancy wouldn't be an accident, an unwanted result of secret lovers. It wouldn't be a source of weakness or shame or failure. It would be the opposite. Celebrated, respected.

 

It would change the whole world for the better.

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Hojo wasn’t in his room. This came as no surprise. The scientist slept very little. In fact, almost everything he did outside of his research seemed to be a chore. He ate for function, not for pleasure, and slept only to fuel alertness. ShinRa had budget for an astounding laboratory inside the reactor where they kept the Jenova specimen, well stocked and equipped with more than they could ever need. The trek from the mansion to the reactor was not a short or simple one. For this, Hojo had set up a smaller makeshift laboratory in the basement. He preferred to work there anyway, among the artifacts of the previous owners, some distant relative of President ShinRa. The house had a name once that was now its secret, lost to its new purpose. And Hojo liked secrets.

 

Lucrecia knew where he was without checking anywhere else beyond his bedroom. She crept down the creaky wooden spiral staircase and through a dirt-floored hallway, dark and damp. She knocked softly on the door that had been constructed of scrap wood, but didn’t wait for a reply to let herself pass through. “Hello? Hojo?”

 

“Good evening, Lucrecia.” Hojo was sitting at a desk, slumped over reams of handwritten notes. Lucrecia was fond of the smell of the basement, musty and old. It was comforting, the aroma of old books and the earthy smell of the stone. “You are up late. Are you well?”

 

She stayed in the doorway, watched him write. She tried to see him the way she saw Vincent, and equal instead of a superior. He was only fourteen years her senior, no matter how much she teased him about being an old man. And there were things she genuinely admired about him— his absolute and unwavering devotion to his work, his ability to see the big picture instead of getting mired in the details while minding them all the same. He was analytical to the point of frustration, but not unwilling to bend. He broke rules when they needed to be broken, followed only the orders of his own head and heart. Hojo was the oddity of the Science Department. It was no secret that he was only there because Gast insisted he be. Hojo worked for the ShinRa in title only. He worked for Gast when it suited him, but everything else he did he did for himself.

 

She smiled as she watched him examine his notes— there was something as equally frustrating as endearing in those scribbles. He had formed an entire system of shorthand that only he understood, and when questioned about it, he’d simply shrug and claim efficiency. Gast was adamant that if something happened to him all of Hojo's research would be rendered useless. Hojo compromised by giving the decipher-key to Lucrecia instead of Gast, an act of insult or favor and nobody could decide which it was. There was something that seemed eternal about Hojo. He was just as imperative to the Jenova Project as the specimen itself. Lucrecia hoped to soon be as well.

 

“Restless night, I suppose. That man, at the reactor,” Lucrecia looked to her slippered feet. She blushed when she realized she was still in her nightgown, hit with the sudden feeling of being very foolish. Hojo didn’t seem to notice or care. For that, she was thankful. “That was intense.”

 

“Understandable. Progress always has enemies. The common people cannot understand. They are simple minded. They oppose the reactor, even though it has made their lives infinitely easier. Coal power is a dirty power source, and that aside, it is filthy and dangerous work for those who mine it. How many of their fathers and grandfathers died in coal mining accidents? In fires? Explosions? Collapses? It is brutal work for meager pay.” Hojo looked up from his papers, blew away stray bit of hair from his face.

 

“But coal mining is a tradition. And people loathe to throw away their traditions, even if it means the betterment of all. Mako energy reduces environmental contaminants substantially, is abundant, easily accessible, and can be harvested with virtually no human labor.” He leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers. “The burden of the scientist. It is our job to always do what is necessary, not always what is popular.”

 

Lucrecia smiled. This was the right thing. “What we were talking about earlier… with Gast…”

“Creating a modern Cetra?” Hojo was still eyeing his notes, only half listening. There was a handsomeness to him, she decided. Not in a conventional way, but in the ways that were often overlooked, the wrinkles around his eyes seemed wise instead of old, and the tight line of his lips thoughtful, not sour. “Interesting. And theoretically possible, if stem cells were used. I wonder… what secrets could it tell? About history? The world? …Us?”

 

Lucrecia’s nails bit half moons into her palms.

 

_No more famines, no more hunger. No more natural disasters, no more… eco-terrorists. And I’ll prove myself once and for all, that I’ve earned my place. At ShinRa, in science. And I'll prove I can be a mother, too. That mothers aren't just mindless extensions of their children. I'll do both. I'll do everything._

 

“Let’s do it. Great accomplishments take great risks, right? Like you said— as long as they were stem cells… we could inject them into a patient in utero.”

 

Hojo straightened in his chair, raised a brow. She had earned his full and undivided attention. No small feat. “A great risk indeed.”

 

“Gast would object at first, but if we approached it carefully, took precautions… I know his curiosity would override any objections. I know it. He is obsessed with the Cetra, and he’d never pass this up, not once we crossed over his ethical barriers.” Lucrecia began to pace, the way she did when she was thinking, excited.

 

“I agree with your assessment,” Hojo watched Lucrecia round the room over the rim of his glasses, watched as she chewed a knuckle, paced back and forth, back and forth. “Even still, finding a woman who would volunteer herself and her unborn child to such experimentation will prove exceedingly difficult. There are few who would understand the immense weight of such a—”

 

Lucrecia’s palms collided with the top of his desk. She leaned in close to him, the gather of her hair slid over her shoulder. “I’ll do it.”

 

Hojo smirked. “Over emotional, unpredictable, defiant, stubborn… and so very _ambitious_.”

 

Lucrecia tried to mask the relief on her face. She was confident he’d be willing— now it was simply a matter of how willing. “But we should act quickly— this changes the trajectory of our research, will double our workload. If ShinRa finds out we have deviated resources from our original research… if they share Gast’s ethical concerns…”

 

“Gast is correct. If this sort of experimentation became public knowledge, ever went beyond the upper echelon, we would be burned at the stake. As far as the ShinRa is concerned, if we convince them our efforts will be profitable I guarantee they will look the other way. Fascinating, Lucrecia. I would have never thought you so bold.  Are you… not concerned?” Hojo’s smirk had faded into a much more somber expression.

 

“I…”

 

_It’s too late to be concerned._

 

“Even using stem cells, the pregnancy has a high risk of failure.”

 

“I understand, Hojo.”

 

“And the resulting specimen may not survive. Even if you are comfortable with these notions, we’d need to find a donor… ”

 

“No, we don’t.”

 

Hojo’s lips parted into a wide, amused grin. “I suppose we could order the Turk to give a—”

 

“—No! Leave Vincent out of this. Gast too.” She almost slapped him, felt like weeping with anger or sorrow or joy, which she didn’t know or care. “We don’t need… a donor.” Lucrecia pulled her lower lip between her teeth, drew a deep breath through her nose. “We do this together. You and I. This is _our_ project. No approvals process, no funding. The original research continues and… we do this as scientists, not as ShinRa employees.”

 

Hojo was silent for several moments, consumed with thought. He stood, rounded the desk to her, and when he spoke, it was wry. “This makes things somewhat awkward.”

 

Lucrecia pushed the fringe from her brow. “A little, doesn’t it? It doesn’t… have to be. I admire you immensely.”

 

Hojo folded his arms. “Over emotional, unpredictable, defiant, stubborn… and so very, very bold. Agreed. We do this. As partners.”

 

“As partners.” Lucrecia agreed, with a small, relieved smile.

 

Hojo returned it. “As parents, then, and partners. …Marry me.”

 


	4. Dead Things

CHAPTER FOUR

_Dead Things_

 

 

 

She had dried her eyes as thoroughly as she could, but they were still swollen and red. She had also tried to go to sleep, lay still and quiet, haunted by the feeling of suffocation in her own skin. Lucrecia decided to step outside, hoped the chilly spring air would soothe her, offer some sort of cleansing. She felt dirty, soiled. It wasn’t that she didn’t care for Hojo. She did. Lots of people got married for lots of reasons other than passionate, fairy-tale love. And maybe, in time, her respect and admiration for her colleague would turn into something else. Still, it all felt wrong.

 

Nobody had minded the grounds of the ShinRa mansion for well over three decades. The remains of dead plants scattered the gardens, forgotten and skeletal, gnarled dry branches grasping at the sky. The only things that lived there now were wild things, weeds and tall grasses and flowers.

 

Vincent was standing near the base of a gnarled weeping willow. There was a rope swing tied to one of the branches, something she had not noticed before. When she saw him she almost ran back inside, but something kept her there, unannounced and observing.

 

He had dug a small hole among the tangle of roots. Vincent crouched over the shallow pit, set something inside of it. He scooped up a handful of dirt and let the grains slip slowly between his fingers to fill it in. There was an element of ritual to his actions, apparent even at a distance.  

 

Curiosity had gotten the best of her, as it always did. She spoke softly as not to startle him. “What are you doing?”

 

Vincent stood, offered her a small embarrassed smile. “It's… nothing.”

 

“It looks like something.”

 

“Well it was _something,_ I suppose. But… it wasn't anything of importance.”

 

“Tell me.” She began to walk to him, watched her footing among the roots and stones.

 

Vincent thought a moment, carefully chose his words. “Protocol dictates what is done with casualties of the Department of Administrative Research.” For a moment, he sounded unsure. “…They do not include any funerary customs. And since protocol makes it so families and friends of the casualty are kept from confidential information— the fact that a casualty even occurred— there is nobody to pay their respects. To help them cross over.”

 

Lucrecia blinked away surprise, her eyelids tacky from all the tears. She had never taken him as a spiritual person, realized that if he was, there was no place for him in a house full of scientists. It twist in her.

 

Vincent shrugged. “So I do it. They say that when something dies, its energy returns to Gaia. It joins the Lifestream and is used somewhere else, for new life. That's why there are people who want to destroy the reactor. Some think that things that die and don't pass over correctly never make it back to the Lifestream. I hope… this one does.” He paused, clearly self conscious. “I guess it seems pretty stupid, doesn't it?”

 

Lucrecia thought she was out of tears, that she had long since spent them. More surfaced. She could not help but think of the man Vincent shot cycling back to the life within her. The idea upset her profoundly.

 

“No. It doesn't.”

 

“Hey. It's okay. You're safe now. I'm so sorry you had to see that.” Vincent moved in to hug her, but stopped himself. "Uhh…” he wiped his palms against the navy blue of his suit pants, the dirt on his hands leaving a smear. “Dirty.” He smiled. “Goes with my shirt, from this morning, I suppose.”

 

Lucrecia threw her arms around him, pressed her face firmly into the nape of his chest. She inhaled deeply, held it, tried to memorize his smell. “I'm so sorry about that. I'm sorry about your shirt. I'll clean it myself. I'm sorry about being so awful to you. I'm sorry about everything and…” She pulled herself away from him, made no attempt to stop her tears. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

 

Vincent’s brow knit as he reached for her, tried to pull her back to him. “Lucy…” He shrugged out of his suit jacket, draped it around her shoulders. “It’s too cold to be out here in—”

 

“Hojo asked me to marry him,” It was even uglier when spoken out loud. She bat his hand away. “And… I said yes.”

 

Vincent's expression collapsed, a distortion of hurt. He looked as if someone had impaled him from behind. “No!” The protest escaped him without thought or even notice. He had clearly started to panic, shook his head as if he could wake himself up from a bad dream. “You said…!”

 

“Vincent I am so sorry.”

 

“Last night we— just last night!”

 

“Vincent, _please_!”

 

“And this morning you… you were talking to me about leaving! About leaving Nibelheim and the Jenova Project and _Hojo_! You said _we_ should get married!”

 

“Listen to me!! I was surprised and confused and—”

 

“What did he do to you, Lucy?! We’ll leave…! Right now! I'll take you anywhere you want to go— The Canyon, Mideel, fuck, we’ll crash the Gold Saucer just…”

 

“Vincent!” She grabbed his hands and held them tightly. “He didn't do anything. I did. I… I _want_ to marry him. I just never thought we could be together like that— that he had those sorts of feelings for me.” Some of that was at least true.

 

The emotion had drained from his face, along with all color. “You… love him?”

 

“…Yes.” The lie stuck in her throat. She was surprised by Vincent’s reaction, by the hurt on his face and in his voice. He was supposed to shrug in that way he did, push his hair from his eyes, nod and say something stupid and cold like ‘affirmative.’

 

For a moment, she thought about telling him. Everything. About the pregnancy, about her fears, about her hopes, about the Cetra, about Hojo, about… but it was too late. Everything had been set in motion, an awful swirl that already felt like it spun into a controlled chaos. The law of physics; for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. All she could do was try and keep it contained. She slipped out of his jacket, folded it over her bare arm, pushed it gently back against his chest.

 

Vincent was now standing straight, his form cool stone. “And this is… what you really want?”

 

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

 

“If you are happy…” he peered down at her from his one unobscured eye, his face perfectly blank. “Then I don't mind.”

 


	5. Congratulations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening - Vincent's Theme - TPR

CHAPTER FIVE

_Congratulations_

 

 

 

 

Vincent sat at the piano in the parlor, playing softly. The old grand had trouble holding a tune, but aside from the dust, it was still as beautiful and regal as it had been in its glory days. He had found a stack of old photos in the bench, formal victorian portraits. A wedding picture, the couple with a baby, and a few more as the family grew all taken in that very room. The last photo in the stack had been a postmortem picture of a girl no more than ten. Vincent had recognized her as the eldest of the children, arranged to look as if she was simply sleeping, a crown of flowers in her hair. There was nothing written on the back. Vincent had set the photo of the dead girl up behind the sheet music, took her out to watch when he played. It made him feel less lonely, hoped it did the same for her. Co-existing with dead children and faded photographs was far easier than with their living counterparts. Sometimes he even played old nursery rhymes for his nameless dead friend.

 

He pretended not to notice when Lucrecia entered, but dutifully paused when she scoot up next to him on the piano bench. He set his hands in his lap and said nothing.

 

“Please, don’t stop on my account.” She smiled timidly at him, waited for him to start again. Vincent had successfully avoided being alone with her for over a month, delayed the inevitable. He accompanied them to the reactor and back as a group, stood guard outside of closed doors on request. But he never spoke. Lucrecia gestured to the keyboard, nudged up against him in a prompt to keep playing. He did not.

 

“…Oh, look. Who is this?” Lucrecia took the photo from the music rack, turned it in her hands. “What a pretty little girl. I wonder if she is dreaming? Where did you find her?”

 

“She’s dead.”

 

“Well, I’m sure she’s dead. This house is over a hundred and thirty years old. I meant in the picture.”

 

“She’s dead in the picture.” Vincent took his flower haired friend from Lucrecia’s hands with annoyance, tucked her safely away behind the sheet music, resentful that she had been touched at all. Lucrecia wanted so badly to hug him, ghost her fingertips up and down against the buzzed black hair at the nape of his neck, twist the long parts around her fingertips.

 

Silence was as much a part of Vincent as his suit or his guns or his dark, deep eyes. But this silence was different, it was awkward and raw. She broke it in the only way she could think to. “Teach me how to play something.”

 

Vincent shift on the bench, splayed his long thin fingers against the keys. His voice had a hollowness to it that was uncharacteristic, even for him. “You are familiar with vocal scales. I suppose it will translate. Here: Do, re, mi, ti, la, do, re, mi, so, fa, do, la, do.”

 

Lucrecia plucked at the keys as he had demonstrated. Her attempt was not nearly as skilled as his, nor was it anything about piano playing. She smiled at him again. “I think you were right. I’ll never be anything but a scientist.”

 

Vincent did not respond to her, instead began to play another slow, somber tune. Lucrecia watched him a moment before she spoke. “Do you know who else plays the piano?” She gave him a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Hojo. So I've heard. I've never seen it, but Gast told me he's quite good. You two are similar in some ways, you know.”

 

Vincent continued to play, kept his eyes firmly on the keys. _How nice. You can interchange us while you fuck._

 

Lucrecia touched his arm, walked her fingers up to his shoulder. “…Oh Vincent. … Please don’t be mad at him.”

 

He didn’t miss a note. “I’m not.”

 

She caught a chunk of his hair between her fingers and tucked it behind his ear. “Are you mad at… me?”

 

Vincent shrugged her hand away. “No.”

 

 _As long as she’s happy… I don’t mind._ It had become his mantra, over and over and over until he thought of nothing else. It was grossly untrue, but if he spun it enough, exist inside the infinite loops of repetition, it would have to do.

 

She frowned, played with the simple gold band that now circled her left ring finger. Something in her had hoped for a different answer. For him to be jealous, to be angry. To act like anything between them had mattered, meant something.

 

“Hojo is an amazing man, Vincent. He’s brilliant, and hardworking and… he’s deep, and thoughtful and if you get to know him… very kind.” She was openly frowning now, hurt by his lack of protest. She had come to him for something else, but would leave with the affirmation that her choice had been the right one. Vincent did not care. Nor did he need to know. And, it seemed clear, he didn’t want to. It hurt her, a crushing ache.

 

Vincent did not allow his own hurt to show. “That’s good. I’m glad you’ve married a man with such admirable features.”

 

Lucrecia put both hands over his, halted his playing. The dissonant note hung in the air, something rotten. She drew a breath, held it until she was dizzy. If there was anything there, anything in him that wanted her, any evidence that he cared about anything at all, maybe there was still time. A final attempt. “Talk to me. _Please_.”

 

Vincent twisted to face her, the dusty sunlight carving severe shadows beneath his cheekbones. Whatever he felt was entirely absent from his expression.

 

“No, I meant _you_ talk— ugh, Vincent…!”

 

“What exactly would you like me to say?” Vincent locked eyes with her, stared into them unblinking.

 

_What do you want from me?! For me to tell you how I feel? How fucking mad I am? Mad about sneaking around with you, treating my feelings for you like a dirty secret for over a year, thinking that when this was over we’d be together?— For being so in love with you I can’t see straight, but always having to act like there is nothing between us? For you creeping into my room for sex as recently as mere weeks ago, begging me to abandon the Turks and run off with you? You even brought up marriage… to me! Of course I want to marry you! I wanted to propose to you when this was over, after you had built your confidence in yourself as a scientist! And the only reason I didn't jump at the chance the second it came up is because I fucking respect you so much, I didn't want to be a distraction or a hindrance to your work! But then you turn around and marry your boss, out of absolutely nowhere? You want me to shout at you? …Cry? Get emotional?_

 

_I promise you— me getting emotional is the last thing you want me to do._

 

_Okay; here’s how I feel. I hate you. I hate Hojo. I want to hurt him. I want to beat him until his face caves in, until there is nothing left but blood and bone and teeth. I could. Maybe I should. They’d never find him. But I don’t think that’s what you want to hear, is it? You timid little doe. So scared by that man I shot. More scared that I shot him. He is lucky that is all I did to him after touching you._

 

_Do you want me to accuse you of betrayal? Demand to know how you could do this? And why you would? But… what would accusations accomplish? He’s better for you. I see it. He’s smart, like you are. You have everything in common. You can talk about things I can’t. I can’t even talk at all. I try, and it gets all tangled up… lost… All I have to offer you is, what, exactly? Dumb loyalty? This assignment is easy. Most are not. Would you even understand what I do? ShinRa sends me into situations and places I’d never, ever take you. I’d be away all the time. We’d never see each other. What about your research?_

 

_And… you said you wanted a family. I… can’t be a dad. And I don't want to! I've seen Veld with his daughter. He almost never sees her. And she's in constant danger, just a tiny little girl, simply for being his child. I’d be too scared. It would cripple me. Lucrecia. You think I’m so cold. That I don’t feel. I feel… too much. All the time. Don’t you understand? Can’t you imagine how dangerous someone like me would be if they let their feelings surface, dictate their actions? I used to. And it took a lot to change that. Maybe you’re right— Hojo and I have something in common. We both understand that emotions compromise._

 

_I love you. I love you with every single fiber of my being and… and if you’re happy, it’s better this way. If you’re happy… I don’t mind._

 

Vincent was looking at her so intensely, unblinking and perfectly still that it frightened her. There was something there, behind the taut line of his full lips, behind his smooth tight brow. And when he finally spoke, he turned away from her. “Congratulations.”

 

Lucrecia lift her hands away from his, released an exacerbated sigh. Part of it was relief in her perception he was not hurt, part of it was a profound sense of loss for the same.  “I’m going up to the reactor. I just… wanted to speak with with you first. Alone.”

 

Vincent stood, checked both of his holsters and straightened the jacket of his suit. The loyal guard dog, ready to pad silently behind its master. It was policy that none of the scientists traversed Mount Nibel without him present— and the prior attempted attack enforced the need for the policy. Hojo had found this obnoxious previously, came and went as he pleased, but now even he waited for the escort. Vincent hoped he would not be there, dreaded the cruel reality that he would soon have to deliver Lucrecia to Hojo not as a colleague, but as his wife.

 

“I can go ahead a ways, if you’d prefer to walk alone. I promise to stay where you can see me.” Lucrecia stood as well, ground the toe of her shoe against the floorboards.

 

“Absolutely not.”

 

“Vincent… we can… still be friends.”

 

“Sure.”

 

Lucrecia instinctively reached for his fingertips. They had always walked hand in hand or arm and arm when they went anywhere together. The walks from the mansion to the reactor were the times they were most freely together. She stopped herself before their fingers touched, shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. Lucrecia rushed ahead, so that he wouldn’t see her tears.

 

 


	6. Rabid

CHAPTER SIX

_Rabid_

 

 

It was just past three in the afternoon and Lucrecia had not yet made an appearance. Vincent had walked with Gast and Hojo to the reactor just as dawn was breaking, painted the mountain a hazy pink and gold. He had returned on his own to wait for her to wake and join them. She did not.

 

Vincent had taken inventory of his equipment, cleaned his guns. He filled out paperwork, read, exercised. He sat at the kitchen table, made an attempt to repair the teacup Lucrecia had broken. Once, he listened at her door and in hearing only silence, thought she had maybe snuck away. He searched the overgrown gardens, the basement; even walked to the reactor and back to check the security log.

 

Something nagged at him, concern and conflict. The line that he had learned to take comfort in, official boundaries that served to corral personal feelings had become unclear. It was the sole purpose of his presence on the Jenova Project to ensure that the scientists were safe. But his worry was overtly personal, clouded his judgement. And with each silent hour that passed, it became more consuming. He had knocked on the bedroom door a few times, but there was never a response. He even attempted to open the door after a bout of hesitation, but it had been locked from the inside. Vincent felt strange about opening the door anyway. He was nothing to her now, and the room was no longer only hers.

 

He sat outside the bedroom, stood, sat again, paced. When he could stand it no longer, he grasped the knob, held it in hesitation. The lock would be easy enough to pick.

 

“Let her rest.” Hojo’s voice caught him in the back, slipped up his spine.

 

Vincent let go of the doorknob, turned to face the other man. A pale pink laced over his cheeks. “I’m sorry. She hasn't come out yet, and I didn't know where she was. This is unlike her. I was concerned.”

 

Hojo glared at him from behind his glasses, suspicious and annoyed. “I'm sure you were. Don't think I don't know the way you’ve always mooned over her. She is a sweet and naive to a fault. Do not mistake her friendliness for affection. Nor should you presume to know what is and is not ‘like’ her. You don’t.”

Vincent narrowed his mahogany eyes. Over a year he and Lucrecia had spent as lovers. Hojo didn't seem to know, even as her husband. She had never said a thing. Had that been the sum of their relationship all along? Sweet naivety? Vincent looked away from Hojo, started past him. “…Apologies.”

 

“Do not think to disturb her again. She hasn't been feeling well.” Hojo moved to the door himself.

 

Even if it was one sided, even if it always had been one sided, Vincent loved her so. It was no longer his concern, not the way he felt it. He asked anyway, found comfort in the fact it was a professional inquiry as well as a personal one. “Is she sick?”

 

Hojo folded his arms, dropped his chin to his chest. Lucrecia had stood in front of their full length mirror the night before, turning to the side and back. She seemed as if she had never seen her reflection before, staring in awe at the curves of her body, both hands cradling her lower abdomen. She seemed to have discovered something in the mirror, a newness, a happiness that wasn’t a shield of optimism. Genuine. Hojo found it deeply disturbing. She was so enthralled with the concept of being a mother that it seemed to have pushed away the dangers of their intentions. Hojo had not slept when she finally did, curled up with her back to him. He lay in stillness, consumed in thought. _I should have sent her back to Midgar._

 

Hojo lift his face, trained his dark eyes on Vincent. “She’s pregnant, Valentine.”

 

Vincent’s lips part wordlessly. The sound of his own heart flooded his consciousness, drown out the rest of the world, dizzy and hot. He spread his fingers, made a fist. And then he exhaled, three sharp breaths that Hojo realized would have been bitter laughter if he had vocalized them. Vincent took a step forward but caught himself and stopped, unintentionally stood the way he did when Veld briefed him, when awaiting orders. “Let me see her.”

 

“No. She will be up when she is ready. She needs to—“

 

Vincent shoved past Hojo, rushed the door. He wouldn’t waste time picking the lock— he’d simply kick it in. He'd lift her from the bed and carry her out of the mansion and away from Nibelheim like she had asked him to, even if she now protested. _Especially_ if she protested. If Hojo was fool enough to try and stop him, he’d put a bullet in his face.

 

Hojo swung between Vincent and the door, raised his arms against the frame. “Under no circumstances will you barge into my chambers on my sleeping wife! She isn’t even dressed! How dare you!” In any other situation, Hojo would have loved nothing more than to observe the Turk wrestle against his emotions. Hojo, like all the others at ShinRa, had heard the rumors— and then verified them. In other circumstances, he may have even taunted Vincent, seen how far he could push, if he could break him. But this was different. And the protective possessiveness he felt for his new wife surprised and scared him.

 

“She is exhausted. You can see her when you do your job and nothing more. Besides, what makes you think she even wants to see you? Move away from my door this instant, Valentine! I command it!”

 

Vincent moved so quickly Hojo didn't have time to react. He grabbed Hojo by the collar of his lab coat, lift him effortlessly off the floor and slammed his back against the wall. He held him with one hand, grabbed Hojo’s face in the other. The cotton of Hojo’s lab coat twisted in Vincent’s fist, choking and tight. Vincent considered snapping his neck, an easy primal kill. He exhaled ragged breaths through his nose, nostrils flaring with each heave. Instead, he tossed Hojo to the side.

 

“Vincent Valentine!” Hojo scrambled upward, steeled himself.

 

Vincent grabbed the knob in both hands, braced his shoulder to force the door off its hinges. Hojo pushed himself between the Turk and the door once again.  “What do you think you are doing?! Stop! You are overstepping your authority! How dare you show such absolute disrespect! Stand down Turk, that’s an official _order!_ ”

 

Vincent pushed the heels of both hands against his temples, shook his head, grit his teeth. Hojo watched with an angry curiosity, watched as Vincent’s expression slacked, as his posture returned to its normal formality. When Vincent looked up again, his face was at it’s default, ghostly pale and eerily calm.

 

Hojo, however, bore it all. His hair was displaced, some of it fallen from the gather of elastic. He was breathing heavily, a hand on his neck where Vincent had grabbed him. His glasses sat lopsided on his nose. “You’re nothing but a mindless animal, a damned dog of the ShinRa!”

 

Vincent stared blankly, with no hint of an expression, no echo of the previous moments. And just as flat, he drew his gun and pushed the muzzle against Hojo’s forehead.

 

And then… Lucrecia called out. Sleepy and confused. She called Hojo’s name with an almost sing-song tone, something sweet and dreamy. Sincere.

 

What seemed to be an eternity passed between the two men, time distorted and forgotten. Hojo could smell it, the pheromones and sweat. As blank as his face was, it was unmistakably present in the swell of Vincent’s pupils, in the grip of his gun. And the scent, so strong, unmistakable. _Hate._

 

Hojo very slowly raised his hands, palms up. “Can’t you hear her? She _needs_ me.”

 

Vincent holstered the gun, but never broke eye contact.

 

“That was a very, _very_ bad choice, Valentine.” Hojo tried to straighten himself, adjusted the mess of his lab coat. “You’ve lost. She belongs to me. And if you ever, ever conduct yourself in such a way again I will have you put down like the rabid beast you are.”

 


	7. Ten

CHAPTER SEVEN

_Ten_

 

 

 

What should we name him?” Lucrecia found it hard to keep still, involuntarily animated by her enthusiasm. She made an attempt to focus on the corner of the ceiling, to find a visual anchor, hoped it would still the rest of her. Hojo was still and quiet when he thought, solid. Lucrecia thought in motion.

 

Hojo adjusted the wand of the ultrasound machine, eyed the screen of the monitor. “…Name him? Be still.”

 

“The _baby_ ,” Lucrecia scrunched her nose since that didn’t count so much as moving.  “Turn the monitor so I can see!”

 

Hojo frowned, haunted by the request. “I don’t think that is wise. For the same reason we certainly are not _naming_ it.”

 

“Let me see! Please? Hojo, we’re doing this together.”

 

“Lu, really. You are acting like a idiot, not a scientist. Did we not discuss that this pregnancy gestating to term and resulting in a live birth has a low probability? Do not become attached.”

 

“We did. And you implying I don't know that is insulting. It’s too late. Besides… why should I worry when I have you? I _trust_ you.”

 

Hojo looked away from her, focused on the machine’s settings. He hated the fact she had said that most of all.

 

“He is going to be born healthy and strong. And we are going to change science, make the world better for everyone. How could I not be attached to that?”

 

The ultrasound display reflected against his glasses, obscured his eyes. Everything about this troubled him. Even more troubling was that it was somehow just as endearing. Lucrecia was a beautiful, almost etherial looking woman with an ease most would have killed for. If she had been plainer, hadn’t taken such care in her appearance, the others in the science world may not have been so skeptical of her. Hojo had wondered more than once if this was a mistake on her part, or intentional. “Foolish. But you know that, don’t you?”

 

“Of course. You call it foolish. I call it optimistic. I know the risks. I am choosing to focus elsewhere. I believe in this. In _you_.” She smiled. “And… whatever happens, I have him now, don’t I? What is real now is still reality. Maybe the reality will change. That doesn’t discount the present. You know what else is a risk to him? Stress. I'm not being stupid. I am being strategic.”

 

Hojo stared at her a moment longer than he had intended. Her optimism wasn’t ignorant, nor was her carefully selected outfits, or the care in which she styled her hair or the clean, simple makeup she wore. She was playing them all, making a point. Letting go of the elements that set her at odds would have been easy, but a defeat. She would outdo them all, and do it in high heels. She would shatter their expectations, forge the way for others like herself. There was a wisdom in it far beyond the sum of anything tangible, far outside the realm of equations, in the safety of controlled variables. Hojo was taken by his feelings for her, the respect and admiration for her; not just as a scientist, but as his wife.  

 

“Hold this still. Don’t move it.” Hojo guided her hand to the wand, turned to prepare the injection. “Him. _Hmph_. Why do you keep saying _him_?”

 

“Because I know he’s a him.”

 

“…Sephiroth.” Hojo tugged on a glove, lift the prepared syringe. “Are you ready? Be still, it will be uncomfortable.”

 

Lucrecia tried to relax, found her focus on the ceiling again. “Seph-i-what?” She held her breath.

 

Hojo leaned into the monitor, watched as the needle penetrated into view on the screen. His eyes dart to her as she cringed, hit him with a pang of concern. _Now who is foolish_? Her reaction was exactly as he had expected it to be, a sharp wince, a grimace. Why then did it snare him?

 

He was silent as the needle found the form within her, as he inject the Jenova cells. “Sephiroth,” he said after he removed the needle, slow and steady. “The Tree of Life.”

 

Lucrecia pushed herself up onto her elbows.

 

"There is a belief in the perfect being that embodies ten elements of the divine creation. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge, kindness, severity, beauty, eternity, glory, foundation and… kingship." Hojo set down the empty syringe, took back control of the wand and then finally, swung the monitor to face her. Her smile was illuminated by the artificial light of the display, a contrast of human and machine. The baby's heartbeat flickered a staticky gray.

 

Hojo frowned. “His name is Sephiroth.”

 


	8. Classified

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening - [ So Far Away [quiet] - Stabbing Westward ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1p3VIER8Tk)

CHAPTER EIGHT

_Classified_

 

 

 

 

The four ShinRa employees traversed the lowermountain path, two by two. It was the newlyweds that lead their small brigade, Gast and Vincent close behind. The Turk kept his attention on Lucrecia while the others passed a lively conversation between themselves. Gast had leaned into Vincent once and whispered “ _don't stare,_ ” but Vincent paid it no mind. He wasn't watching her as anything complete, but a series of parts. There was something in her movements that seemed off, unsteady. And she was quiet, letting opportunities to tease or debate slip by.

 

So quiet that the others almost didn't notice as she dropped, as her knees folded together and the rest of her followed down. Vincent moved in precision reflex, grabbed her before she landed, an arm beneath. His shins hit the ground before she did, caught against his lap.

 

“Oh!” Hojo pivot.

 

Lucrecia sat dazed and vacant for a moment, until her cheeks flushed a bright pink, racked by embarrassment. “I'm okay,” she said with a dismissive smile.

 

All of the men were looking at her, their faces a mirror to her self doubts, the thing that whispered _weak woman_ and _helpless_ and _joke_ and _damsel_ and _liability._ “Just… lightheaded for a moment. That’s all. I lost my footing.” She tried to scramble up, annoyed that Vincent seemed to be holding her firmly in place. Until she realized he wasn't holding her down at all. She was diagonal against him, one of his arms under her legs, the other behind her shoulders. Nothing about him was restricting her, only supporting. She hid the creeping sense of panic at the realization it was her own body that kept her from rising, not him.

 

Hojo passed his eyes over her, a quick sweeping inspection. “This was sudden?” Hojo touched her cheek, then her brow. He shook his sleeve away from his wrist, glanced to his watch, took her pulse. When he finished, he stood, thinking. “You should rest today.”

 

“Hojo, I’m fine! Really! It was just… it's the altitude!”

 

Hojo stood. “Turk. Take her back to the house.”

 

Vincent stood as well, lifted Lucrecia with him. He did not let go of her when they were standing. Her claims of a passing dizziness had not fooled him. Her steps had been slower, her gait unsteady. He would let go of her when he was certain she'd stay upright.

 

“No!” Lucrecia protest, leaning too heavily against Vincent. “I have a ton of work at the reactor and if I don't finish, it will delay all of—”

 

“You have work at the house as well. Document this incident, take your vitals, and rest.” Hojo pressed a loaded, knowing look on her. A private anger flashed across his face.

 

Gast frowned. “I think he’s right, Lu. Listen to him. We’ve got a long way to go yet, and the further we walk up, the further we have to come back down.”

 

“But!” Lucrecia hated all of them.

 

“This isn’t exactly safe terrain, even without dizzy spells. That old rope and plank bridge is an accident waiting to happen. Being that high can cause vertigo on it’s own. Just for today, yeah?” Gast nodded as if he was affirming the decision. “I’m sure you’ll be feeling better in no time.”

 

“I’m feeling _fine_!” Lucrecia steadied her legs, pushed herself upright and held herself proudly erect. She refused to waiver, and the feeling had mostly passed. Vincent kept a hand on her arm.

 

“Please. You are acting like a spoiled child.” Hojo folded his hands behind his back, turned away from her. “I do not want you walking the rest of the way up the mountain if you are having dizzy spells. Gast is correct. It is not safe. You are being selfish. …Do your job as member of this team and as a mother. That is just as important.”

 

Lucrecia knew what he had meant, the explicit implication that her pregnancy was her job, in more ways than the others could know. She dropped her head in defeat, did not look up as Gast and Hojo continued on without her.

 

Vincent loosened his fingers, but stayed close. “…Being a mother _is_ a very important job. It is a sacred calling, even if most don't acknowledge it. Bringing a child into this world is easy. Being a parent is not."

 

"Oh _really_? You are an expert on parenting now?" She almost laughed, a big ugly guffaw. "That's right, Mr. I-Don't-Want-Children. You always were. If I recall correctly, and I promise that I _do_ , you were the one who told me that I wasn't cut out to be a mother. A scientist, sure, but never a wife, or a parent.”

 

Her comment hit him far harder than she knew, enough to crack a seam through his stoic facade. Another casualty of good intentions destroyed simply by passing and processing through him. He had only meant to make her feel better, to support her, to voice that her choices were valid under the criticism of so many others. Vincent had felt so much guilt at the idea of reducing her to the concept of _his_ wife, the mother of _his_ children with every pang on jealousy. He hadn't realized until that moment that maybe, it was not a reduction; a demotion. That there was a world in which she had genuinely wanted those things for herself. Now it was too late. She had them. The fact it was with Hojo, and by virtue of that was better for her, did not negate the lead in his heart. His face fell. "That… isn't… what I meant."

 

"Then why did you say it?"

 

He did not want her in the space she was inadvertently picking at, did not want her any closer to the dangerous current just below. "Why did you lie about fainting?”

 

She kept her gaze at her feet. “I… got dizzy for a just a moment. It came and went. I’m fine now!” Her claims did not impress him. She sighed. “How… did you know?”

 

“It is my duty to pay attention to the conditions of the scientists on this assignment and ensure their physical safety.” Vincent did not let his face betray him. _Because I know you. Because I know how you move. I know the sway of your hips, the distance of your steps, the curve of your lower back. I know how you talk, and the tone of your voice, the way you gesture. And I know something isn’t right._

 

Lucrecia frowned at the word 'conditions,' some notation in a status report. She gave him a pleading look. “Are you really going to make me go back?”

 

Vincent did not move or speak, which was response enough. She seemed to do better on the way back down, though she walked with her hand in the crook of his elbow, an attempt for stability of a different kind. “I just… I’ve been tired. I haven’t been sleeping. And I don’t have much of an appetite, so I haven’t been eating well. My blood sugar probably crashed is all.”

 

“And you are sure you’re alright?” He glanced down to her, paused to help her step down a steep grade. She gave a twirl at the bottom, struck a pose.

 

“Yep, fine! See?”

 

She sighed, flipped the gather of her hair behind her shoulder. “Hojo was right— there is work I could do back at the mansion. That’s not the point. It's the principle of the thing. I don’t want to fall behind, for them to think I can’t handle it. And I have samples to finish testing at the reactor from yesterday.”

Vincent looked on ahead. “I am confident your husband thinks quite highly of you.” There was nothing bitter or envious in his tone, just a plainness, a stated fact. “He is concerned for you.”

 

He tried to smile, tried to turn up the corners of his lips, to be her ‘friend.’ It was not successful. His face was frozen despite his efforts. It was better this way. Hojo’s reaction and concern for his wife were valid, but more, it was of an appropriate level. Vincent knew that if Lucrecia had been _his_ , his calm would have been external only. Internally, he'd of gone half mad with worry, a spiral of worst case scenarios and fear until it had ravaged him, obsessing and obsessing into a collapse of… for something that was probably nothing at all. Nothing at all into something destructive, violently possessive, isolating.

 

Vincent was thankful he was able to retreat into the safety of rules and boundaries, the things that lined a professional relationship and not a personal one. _It doesn't concern me_ didn't soothe his feelings, but put them in a safe place, in a space he could shut off and lock away. It made them inappropriate, unprofessional. Irrelevant.

 

By the time they had returned to the mansion, she seemed to have regained most of her usual spunk. She asked Vincent questions as she always did without pausing for answers, aware she wouldn't get them. She smiled and laughed and even stuffed a wildflower into his suit breast pocket.

 

Vincent paused at the bottom of the mansion’s outer steps. Lucrecia continued on, but stopped a few stairs up when she realized he wasn’t following. He gestured to the side of the house with a tip of his head. “Wait here a minute.”

 

Lucrecia looked where he had indicated, then back at him puzzled. “What?”

 

“You said you didn’t want to rest. And you assured me you are feeling better.”

 

“Well, yes. So?”

 

“So, I’ll be right back.” Vincent waved awkwardly. The ShinRa mansion was situated at the back of Nibelheim, away from the small town square and rows of modest houses. Even from the distance it dominated the village, a looming observer.

 

Lucrecia watched him as he walked to the wrought iron gate and pushed through, disappeared down the bend of the path.

 

When he returned, it was with a truck.

 

Vincent climbed out, walked to the passenger side and opened the door. He stood beside it with his hands folded, waited for her to approach. The truck was an ugly vehicle, bulky and brown. The whole thing shook as it idled, stunk of exhaust. Vincent looked ridiculous next to it, in his perfectly pressed suit and tie, fresh shoe polish and fingerless gloves. Lucrecia grinned from behind the fence.

 

“I thought you Turks drove sexy cars. Sleek, tinted windows. You going to take up farming?” She passed through the gate.

 

“You don't like Bessy?” The only thing that moved on Vincent were a few strands of hair, stirred by the summer breeze.

 

“Your truck is named Bessy?!” Lucrecia laughed, leaned forward to peek at the interior. She couldn't tell if he was being deadpan or sincere, with his deep smooth voice and mannequin face. She loved and loathed him both for it.

 

“Yes. Bessy. The elderly gentleman who runs the shop owns it. I asked if I could borrow it.”

 

“Why? You going to go joy riding?”

 

“Off-roading. It's a long way around, but there are still a few supply roads up to the reactor. Hojo didn't say anything about _riding_. Get in.”

 

Vincent shut the door when she was seated, rounded to the other side. Lucrecia watched the mansion grow smaller behind them with distance as he drove. She was stunned into a temporary quiet at Vincent's open act of defiance, that he had chosen her over a direct order. It hurt her heart. Someday, maybe she would feel something like love for Hojo. But she would never love anything near as much as she still loved her dutiful, somber, strange Turk. “…Thank you.”

 

He acknowledged her with the smallest of nods, a simple and shallow dip of his chin. He said nothing, worked the stick shift and maneuvered the truck over the unsteady terrain in silence. Lucrecia frowned, turned to look out the window. “Hojo mentioned that the two of you had a disagreement a while back. He wouldn't say anything else."

 

Vincent smiled suddenly, a big, toothy, dumb grin, some silent amusement. He kept his eyes firmly on the road, rocking with the shocks of the truck.

 

“What?!” Lucrecia snapped back to face him, surprised and annoyed by his grin. Perhaps it was because she wasn't used to seeing it, but it seemed almost grotesque. “What happened?”

 

He turned to look at her a moment, still smiling wildly. There was nothing happy or kind in it. There was a spitefulness to it, coming from some dark place. "Stop that, it's _creepy_!" She furrowed her brow, exasperated.

 

“State your name,” Lucrecia ordered in an official tone, frustrated with herself. She had just instructed him to stop emoting, realized the unfairness in the fact she wanted him to, except for when she didn't. “I’m taking mental notes.”

 

Vincent finally let the smile go. “Valentine, Vincent.”

 

“Date of birth?”

 

“October 13th.”

 

Lucrecia leaned her head back against the seat.

 

“Bloodtype?”

 

“A.”

 

“ShinRa Employee Identification number?”

 

“36105997.”

 

“Your happiest memory?”

 

Vincent glanced to her out the the side of his eye.

 

“…Classified.”

 

“Oh, why do I even try? You probably don't have any happy memories. You probably don't even know what happiness is.” She regret her words as soon as they left her. What was meant to be a playful jab had come out as honest resentment, far more loaded than intended. But it had been said, and as his response of predictable silence grew longer, her regret didn’t dig so deep.

 

“What happened between us… Vincent. I hope you understand. I wasn’t lying when I said that I loved you. But you… to have a relationship, both people have to actively participate. They both have to be present. You’re always somewhere else. Somewhere far away.” She looked at him intensely, watched his face for a tell, sighed when she found none. “You don’t talk about yourself. How you feel. What you think."

 

The rear wheels of the truck were kicking up plumes of dirt, small rocks pinging and clunking against the undercarriage. “…I’m happy when I’m with you,” he said.

 

Vincent pulled the truck up behind the reactor, climbed out and quickly surveyed the perimeter. When he returned, he opened the passenger door, held out his hand to help her down. They walked the rest of the way together, until Lucrecia swiped her keycard to enter the airlock. Vincent sat on the top step, leaned his elbows against his knees. “…Sitting on the roof.”

 

Lucrecia looked to him, the navy blue of his back. “What did you say?”

 

He didn’t turn around, but lifted his chin, raised his voice. There was something small in it. “My happiest memory. Sitting on the roof. …With my dad.”

Lucrecia smiled, took a moment to savor the bittersweet of something present and all too late.

 

 


	9. Disturbed

CHAPTER NINE

_Emotionally Disturbed_

 

 

 

_Mr. Valentine?" Grimoire removed his hat when he entered the office, frowned at the back of a lanky boy hunched over in a chair. The boy's mess of hair obscured his face, curtains of thick wavy black._

 

_The headmaster gestured to an open chair. "Thank you for coming on such short notice. Have a seat, please."_

 

_"Vincent, as you are well aware, has been causing us a great deal of… trouble. The fighting, the truancy, the aloofness— it is out of control. Most of the time he is quiet and withdrawn. He keeps to himself, does not participate. But he also has an explosive temper, cries easily and often, and lives in his antisocial daydreams." The headmaster sat himself behind his desk, steepled his fingers. "He is, in some limited ways, a bright student. He is a promising young pianist and is consistently well spoken and mannered with adults. But he lags behind in all other subjects and is clearly…." there was a hesitation, punctuated by a cleared throat, "emotionally disturbed."_

 

_Grimoire frowned again, looked to his son now in profile. His face was still covered, but Grimoire didn't need to see it. Droplets of wet dark bloomed on fabric of Vincent's pants where his tears landed. Grimoire set his palm gently between his son's shoulders. "With all due respect, that is a bit harsh. Vincent has… been through a lot."_

 

_The headmaster waved his hand dismissively. "That is too bad, but you must understand that we cannot have students acting in this way. Vincent, show your father your hands."_

 

_The boy sniffled, lift his head to face his father. His cheeks were streaked with tears, the meld of his upper lip glossed in snot. He shook his head meekly, a few stray swoops of hair stuck to his cheeks. "Come now, Vincent. Show me your hands." Grimoire pushed, but it was gentle, kind._

 

_Vincent lift his hands as instructed, slowly, as if weighted by shame. Five of his knuckles were split, caked his fingers in rusty red. Most of the blood had dried. Most of it wasn’t his._

 

_Grimoire sighed a long, contemplative sigh. "What happened?"_

 

_Vincent's small voice was as awkward and gangly as the rest of him. "…A rabbit."_

_"A rabbit?"_

 

_"…They were_ _hurting_ _it. Wilek Russel cornered it by the fence, grabbed it by the ears. They said they wanted to see—“ Two fat tears raced down Vincent's cheeks._

 

_The headmaster scoffed. “—He almost beat Wilek Russel to death is what he means to say. The poor boy will probably have two dozen stitches and his jaw wired shut. I don’t know how he does it. He’s such a scraggly thing. If your son was half as good at thinking as he is at fighting…"_

 

_Grimoire's eyes seemed almost crimson in the afternoon light. "Vincent…"_

 

_"That’s the thing, you see. Everyone keeps their distance from him, even when he is calm. He scares them. He scares me. The other boys used to fight back. But it is almost as if he gets himself so worked up that it shuts off his ability to… think, or reason or care about physical pain or consequence. This is a good trait for a soldier, not for a student. …So you do understand, Mr. Valentine, that this incident coupled with the numerous others… he can no longer attend this academy.  He is a liability. Please, sign here." The headmaster slid a pile of documents to Grimoire, followed by a pen. Vincent's father signed them silently, then stood. He returned his hat to his head, squeezed his son on the arm._

 

_The pair did not speak as they exit the office, as they walked down the labyrinthian hallways and out to the courtyard. When they had passed enough distance from the school, Grimoire stopped to hug his son._

 

“ _Dad?” The reddish brown of Vincent’s eyes were enhanced by the tears that welled in them. “Are you mad at me?”_

 

“ _No,” Grimoire sighed, letting him go. He put both hands on Vincent’s shoulders. “…No. We’ll find a place for you.”_

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

The mansion was quiet. Sometimes the wind whipped dead branches against window panes, howled mournfully as it tossed dried leaves in swirling gales. The grandfather clock that lived in the foyer ticked away time, a steady hollow rhythm, the heartbeat of the house.

 

Hojo was in the basement with his strange cryptic notes. Gast and Lucrecia had both gone to sleep. Vincent lay in his bed, his long bare arms folded over his face. He was dressed in his usual nightclothes, a plain black tee shirt and simple cotton pants. The winter prior, they had trouble with the heating capacities of the drafty old house. At night, he had wrapped himself around Lucrecia, held her back against his chest, kept her warm and close until morning stole her away. He did not trust Hojo to keep her warm the way he had. The shifting weather felt ominous.

 

Vincent stood, padded to a small table and sat. He begun to fill out paperwork, wrote up a request for a portable heating unit for Lucrecia's room. He suddenly sat upright, jerked his face to the door in thoughtless reflex.

 

Screaming.

 

Vincent grabbed the smaller of his guns and ran, aided in speed by his long thin legs and in stealth by his bare feet. He dart down the hallway, passed through dusty pools of moonlight cast by the mansion's massive stained glass windows. Past the central staircase, he rounded a corner and slid backwards up against Lucrecia’s door. He listened intently for a moment, until she screamed again. Vincent spun, aimed the gun forward in both hands and kicked in the door.

 

Lucrecia was sitting upright in the middle of the bed, a hand on the swell of her belly. She didn't seem to notice him. Vincent swept the gun from one side of the room to the other, corner to corner, then pushed in the light switch with his elbow. Even in the flood of light, she did not react to his presence. She was visibly slick, her hair was damp and clung around her face, and the neckline of her white sleeveless nightgown was discolored with wet.

 

“Lucy?” Vincent set the pistol atop a dresser, rushed to the bedside.

 

She was mouthing words silently, an incomprehensible stream of nothingness. Vincent put a knee on the bed, then another, crept slowly towards her. “…Lucrecia?”

 

“Traverse and duplicate. Every. Pulsing. Echo. Infect… infected… disease. Duplicate.” Her hands started to shake, then her whole body trembled. Vincent gave her a gentle nudge. She did not respond. Her pupils were so dilated they almost entirely eclipsed the green of her eyes.

 

Vincent cupped her shoulder, surprised at how cold her skin felt in contrast to the obvious and alarming amount of persperation. His touch, skin on skin, seemed to awaken some consciousness in her. “It's _bleeding_!!” She screamed again.

 

Vincent tore back the tangle of blankets and sheets, his relief to see that she was not bleeding almost euphoric. He lowered himself slowly onto the edge of the bed, cautious. “…What’s bleeding?”

 

Lucrecia began to shake again, this time more violently as tears shot down her face. She looked ill, discolored and hollow. “The sky! The sky is bleeding! Fire and death and screaming— his face— it's the same. Vincent’s face. But mako and white and everything dies and it’s all my fault and—”

 

Vincent grabbed her, pulled her into his lap. She was cold and damp and strangely felt lighter, some fragile thing. He held her tightly against himself, pushed his chin into the part of her hair, rocked her. “It's just a _nightmare_. A bad dream. Nobody is dying. Nothing is bleeding. You’re _safe_. I've got you.” He cradled her, listened as her breathing slowed and her sobs transitioned to whimpers. "I've got you, Lucy. You're okay. You're safe. Baby is safe. Just a dream, a bad dream."

He sat with her for a long time even though it hadn’t felt like enough, tangled in his arms, her face firmly against the side of his neck. Until despite every selfish desire in his being he helped her lay back in the bed, pulled the blankets up to her ribs, straightened them around her. He stood, looked to the window. It had blown open, the wind causing the white lace drapes to dance. Vincent walked to the window, pulled it shut and latched the lock. He let himself consider Hojo, annoyed and angry by his absence. This was Hojo's place, not his. “I’ll… go get your husband. I'll be right back.”

 

Lucrecia’s eyes were closed, and her words were tinted by sleepiness. “No. No Hojo. Stay with me.”

 

Vincent's shoulders slumped. “I… _can't_.” He lift his eyes to her, deeply wounded. “But… I’ll sit outside. By the door. Just in case. Okay? Anything that wants to hurt you has to go through me. Now and always.”

 

Lucrecia did not respond, most likely taken by sleep. He sighed, crept quietly out of the room and gently shut the door. He'd explain the broken lock to Gast tomorrow, help him fix it. And as he said he would, Vincent leaned his back against the wall, allowed himself to slide down until he was seated on the floor, an empty sentinel.

 

Something snapped him back to awareness, back to the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer below, to the smooth worn wood of the floorboards. Lucrecia had wandered out of the room wrapped in a sheet. She collapsed on the floor next to him and dropped her head into his lap, still asleep.

 


	10. The Gods Themselves

CHAPTER TEN

_The Gods Themselves_

 

 

 

Hojo shrugged out of his lab coat, hung it on the back of the door and smiled softly at his wife. She sat cross legged in the bed, her palm along the side of her belly. In her other hand she held a book and read aloud from it. He glanced at the title on the cover, abandoned his smile. _The Gods Themselves._ “Where did you find that trash?”

 

He was haunted by her happiness, by her easy love and her disregard for any outcome other than the one she wanted. They had talked about this over and over, and each time Lucrecia smoothed down his concerns with reassurances. _Stress and worry may compromise the results. A lack of maternal attachment may compromise the results. Not attempting to emulate a normal, healthy pregnancy may compromise the results._ But as the pregnancy progressed, his faith in her excuses and justifications waned.

 _This isn’t science_ , Hojo realized beyond his own excuses, _this is nothing but foolish, dangerous love._

 

Lucrecia finished the paragraph she was reading, though she did it with no rush. “Just a moment, Sephiroth.” She looked up to Hojo, stuck her tongue out at him. “It’s fiction. Creative. It’s _interesting_. Quantum physics, parallel universes… it's about an alien race looking to save their dying home, they create a supernova and—”

 

Hojo turned his back to her as he undressed, changed into his nightclothes. “As I said. Pulpy trash. Go find a book from the library downstairs.”

 

Lucrecia frowned. “I want to enrich him, foster a love of literature. Not bore him to death. Besides, he likes it.” _And his father gave it to me._ “Come sit by me, watch. He gets all wiggly when I read.”

 

Her smile was so bright and genuine it burned him. Hojo shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, then adjust his glasses. “Lu… _please_. Listen to me. To yourself, even. You know better. Reading to it… talking to it… you are so attached to this thing and,“

 

“ _Him_ ,” she interject harshly.

 

“He isn’t a thing he is a _him_! You’ve seen that I was right in the ultrasounds. Sephiroth is a him!”

 

“No, Lucrecia. _It_!” Hojo sighed, angry and frustrated and most of all, conflicted. “It is an experiment. Have you lost your mind? It is astonishing that it has not terminated by now, and that it seems to be thriving. But this is a small piece of a very large puzzle. It may not survive post birth, and if it does, we do not know what challenges it will face. We should be focusing on the differences of this specimen, not trying to make into more of the same! I did not agree to this so we could play house!”

 

Lucrecia set down the book slowly. When his words receded, they left her looking broken and very small.

 

Hojo inhaled deeply through his nose and held it. When he let it go, the frustration in his voice had been overtaken by remorse. “…I should have sent you back to Midgar.”

 

“But you didn’t. And now it’s too late.” Lucrecia picked up the book again, flipped through looking for her place, or a distraction, or some comfort of Vincent. She found nothing, tossed the book across the bedspread. “And what if… what if everything works out? Will you love him? Will you have any attachment to him at all? What if he is born healthy, and he is a normal, happy child?”

 

Hojo frowned, a crushing weight in his chest. “…Then we should not have done this.”

 

 

†††

 

 

 

“Lu, you’re going to burn through our entire budget eating like that.” Gast sat down next to her with his own plate of breakfast. Lucrecia laid down her fork, flustered and self conscious. Hojo glanced up over the top of his newspaper. “Keep your commentary to yourself, old man.”

 

“Ahh, I'm just teasing. Good appetite for once. Means a healthy baby. I'm glad to see you finally eat something, I’ve been worried.” Gast salted his eggs. “Though… you’ve been looking pretty rough. Your a beautiful lady and all but, ah,”

 

Hojo frowned, disappeared again behind the paper. “Don't patronize her.”

 

Vincent looked up from his toast. The irony of Hojo scolding Gast for patronizing Lucrecia almost made him smirk. But any amusement he felt drained away when he returned his attention to her. She had clearly lost her appetite, her usual aura of playful optimism notably absent.

 

“I don’t know about all this. The doctor in town here is old as shit and probably twice as dumb. Maybe we should get someone from the city up here. Secret marriages, pregnancies; I’m starting to think you two are conspiring to derail my project,” Gast speared the air with his fork.

Lucrecia gave Hojo’s shin a very gentle nudge under the table with the toe of her shoe.  “The doctor here is very sweet, and he probably has helped fifteen generations of children into this world. I’ll go check in with him later today, if it makes you feel better. I’m just exhausted. I don’t mean to concern you… and I don’t mean to be a distraction. I've been having trouble sleeping. Probably that whole… making a human thing.”

 

Gast let his attention linger on her, and the crease in his brow deepened. An uneasy quiet settled on everything in the room like a film, sticky and cloying. “…Probably.”

 

“I’ll stay out of the way, move to a support role for now. I can do this, and I won’t cause any problems.” Lucrecia made an effort to sound extra cheerful. “I can compile and record data here, at the mansion. Keep everything in order.”

 

Hojo sipped at his coffee, then went back to his paper. “Careful. You’ll put Gast’s mutt out of work.” He gave a dismissive wave to her. “Don't look at me like that. I'm sure they’ll send him to some beautiful farm where he can run free and bask in the sunshine. That, or send him to a glue factory with the all the other euthanized pets.”

 

Lucrecia swiped the newspaper downward and out of her husband’s hands. “That is enough! I won’t have you or anyone else speak of Vincent that way!”

 

Hojo was stunned by her reaction, by her defensiveness. His hands that moments ago held the newspaper hovered empty. His face darkened and he swung around to face her. “I don’t care how insane pregnancy hormones have made you, don’t you _dare_ ever—”

 

A movement of blue and white and black, a scrape of a chair. Vincent was between them.

 

The Turk towered over Hojo, still seated. The sleeves of Vincent’s white dress shirt had been rolled up to his elbows, exposed his forearms. Hojo had never been this close to Vincent without his full uniform, the navy blue suit coat hung on the back of his abandoned chair, his fingerless leather gloves folded in his pockets. Without them, Hojo noticed the scars that snaked his wrists and forearms, splotched his knuckles and the back of his hands. Vincent leaned in, his tie trailing his bend across the table top. The swiftness of his movements were sharply contrast by the calm smoothness of his voice. “…Or _what_?"

 

Hojo couldn’t stand the insult, or the nameless implications of Lucrecia’s reaction he felt but did not know. He rose, still a head shorter than Vincent even when standing. “Gast Faremis! I will not tolerate this! Kennel your dog this instant!”

 

“Vincent!” Gast slammed down his utensils and stood as well. “Stand down!”

 

Vincent took a single step backwards, positioned himself behind Lucrecia’s chair.

 

“I don’t what in the hell is going on here, but that is more than enough! Hojo, I know how you feel about ShinRa and the Turks, but don’t forget that they are funding this and all the work you’ve done for over a decade! They’ve practically written us a blank check here, and they want to make sure their investment is protected!” Gast gestured wildly to Vincent. “And he has done a damned good job! Some crazy person would have opened your wife’s throat if he hadn’t been here, or did you forget that? So lay off!”

 

Gast turned to Vincent, shook his head. His voice softened. “I was as shocked by their… relationship as you were. But your assignment concerns the Jenova Project, not their marital disputes. Stay out of it!”

 

“And you…” Gast sighed, finally looked to Lucrecia. “Have Vincent take you up to the reactor to get your materials. You can set up in Hojo’s lab.”

 

Lucrecia removed the napkin from her lap, placed it on the table and stood. She put her fingertips against the small of Vincent’s back as they both moved to exit. Vincent paused, doubled back to grab his jacket. He flung it over his shoulder, grabbed his neglected toast, and gave a parting ShinRa salute to Hojo.

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent helped Lucrecia into her coat, worked her ponytail from the collar and smoothed it behind her. When they opened the door, Lucrecia dart outside and down the steps. “It’s snowing!! Oh, look how pretty everything is!”

 

“Lu— wait!” Vincent hurried after her, skid to a stop on the landing, left smears of white where his shoes had slid. “Be careful, it’s slippery!”

 

Lucrecia shook her head, tilt it to the side and smiled as she looked at him, so stark against the world turned to white. “Vincent!” Her eyes went wide, “behind you!” She scooped up a handful of snow when he looked, tossed it at him when he turned back. The snowball caught him in the face. He shook his head in a spray of white, passed her a disapproving look.

 

She bit her lower lip. “Aw, I’m sorry…! I should maybe make it a point to stop throwing things in your face, shouldn’t I?” Lucrecia brushed her gloves off against each other, stuffed her hands into her pockets. “…Forgot for a second you don’t like _fun_.” She turned her back to him and started on ahead, trailed by an aching loneliness. Vincent walked behind her, with nothing but the crunch of their footfalls between them.

She had let herself become lost in her thoughts when something caught her in the back, a gentle thump. She spun on her heels to see what had hit her. There was nothing behind her, and she suddenly found herself alone. “…Vincent?” She looked back to the path ahead, and then behind her. They sky was a dull, empty gray, wept big and slow flakes. “Vincent!?” Her calls to him were muffled by the snow, absorbed into the brisk quiet. Lucrecia’s breath bloomed on her lips. “Vinc—”

 

She took a step backwards, bumped up against his chest. Vincent dropped an armload of snow over the top of her head. She shrieked as it went down the back of her coat, between her breasts, behind her ears. He caught her when she staggered back, held her steady around the shoulders and smiled stupidly when she gave his chest a playful slap. “…I like… fun.” Vincent wiped at the trails of wet the melting snow left on her cheeks with the ball of his thumb, with all the gentleness in the world. He did not let her go. He couldn’t.

 

“Why did you do that… at breakfast?” The green of her eyes were even more vivid in the crisp cold.

 

Vincent dropped his head and looked away from her, embarrassment consuming him. He remembered what she had said in the truck. _You never tell me anything. How you think. What you feel._ He forced himself to speak, though it was quiet and fragile. Uncomfortable. “…He… scared me.”

 

“Wait. What? Hojo scared _you_?! How could you ever be afraid of Hojo?” Lucrecia couldn’t help but laugh, though she felt horrible when she felt his shoulders slump and his arms slack around her.

 

Vincent pushed through himself to lift his face and look directly at her. He felt the words, all the reasons so clear in his head but a jumble of formless chaos in his mouth. It took him a moment, but he forced them through, one at a time. “I thought he might hurt you.”

 

Lucrecia reached up, took his face in both of her hands. She moved to her toes, pushed up against him. But she did not kiss him. _No, Vincent._ She could feel his heartbeat, his radial warmth. _Nobody did that but you._

 


	11. JENOVA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

_JENOVA_

 

 

 

It will be just a minute while I pack up some things.” Lucrecia sniffled, dabbed at her nose with the back of her glove. The cold had made it pink and runny. “You've never actually been in here, have you?”

 

The reactor was almost unrecognizable from the inside. Pipes and valves and wires came and went everywhere, lined the grungy metal walls, noisy and hot. “No,” Vincent confirmed.

 

“Stay close. It's kind of a maze in here. The proper reactor parts are quite dangerous. Luckily we stay mostly to one area, where Jenova is stored. This way!” Lucrecia lead him through passages and chambers, warned him to duck under low beams, of unexpected steps. “I know you know about it as the objective to this project, but do you know anything else about the Promise Land?” She didn't wait for an answer.

 

“It's supposed to be an almost limitless well of mako energy. According to Gast, the Cetra were the only ones who could find it. The Cetra were a migratory people, and the theory is the Promise Land moved as well. Like maybe a bottleneck in the Lifestream. ShinRa, being a power company that generates electricity from mako, is veeeeery interested in this idea. That is where we come in.” She leaned against the door for a moment to catch her breath, held her swollen middle with both hands. “We figure out what allowed the Cetra to track and identify this mako field, and we make ShinRa very, very, very rich. Ready?” Lucrecia swiped her keycard again, input a numerical passcode.

 

Vincent was instantly overwhelmed by the thing that dominated the room, a massive cylindrical glass capsule surrounded by machinery. A hose, nearly as wide as him ran the length of the floor and disappeared into the bottom of the tank, umbilical. He followed it closer, until he stood only a few steps from the glass.

 

“This is… Jenova?” The lights of the tank cast long and severe shadows on Vincent’s face, gave his pallor a sickly blue tint.

 

Lucrecia did not look up from the table as she gathered her materials into a box. “Mhmm, that's her.”

 

Vincent took a small step forward, strangely intimidated. The mechanics of the tank rumbled and droned, a song lacking any semblance of melody but ripe with a soul. He felt as if they had been swallowed by a great creature, the sounds of the reactor so very alive and so very inhuman. He had not thought much about the Jenova specimen beyond a concept, as an actual object. It was omnipresent, a deity the four worshipped in a mundane ritual of tasks. Whatever he thought it would have looked like, it was not the thing before him.

 

The woman in the tank was identifiable as female on its form alone. Jenova’s breasts were obvious, swollen grotesque masses. What appeared to be thick webs of scar tissue covered them entirely, and neither breast had nipples. Where one should have been, on the right, appeared to be a half formed eye. Dozens of feet of what looked to be intestine roped around her externally, spilled from her open torso. And behind her, what Vincent could only identify as lung tissue splayed outward like perverse pink wings. Atop her head was a metal band, an entrance and exit for tubing and wires, engraved with words that seemed suddenly meaningless.

 

**JENOVA - Great Glacier Specimen - ShinRa Electric Power Company**

 

Worst was her face. Her chin was angled downward, but she was looking straight ahead, tendrils of wispy white hair suspended in the still fluid. Her right eye was missing entirely, a gaping black hollow in its place. The left was open as wide as possible, showing the entirety of a ring of white, a sliver of iris that circled a dilated pupil. And her mouth, most disturbing of all, was rigid and unmoving in an open grin, teeth and gums and tongue. Her expression was horrific, a look of both rapture and cruelty eternal.

 

Vincent couldn’t help himself, put his palm against the glass, as drawn to her as he was repulsed. The tank was warm. Jenova’s empty stare made his skin crawl, mocking, piercing. The thing was long dead, frozen for thousands of years, a mass of tissue and genetic data and nothing else. He knew it, but there was an uncanny presence in her one eye, something sentient. Aware.

 

Vincent could see his distorted image against the glass, his reflection’s fingertips touching his own. As he leaned in, the sounds of the reactor began to fade around him, lost to the entity's presence. Then, breathing, heavy and hard, building into a series of moans, unmistakably sexual and unmistakably Lucrecia’s.

 

… _ʌ_ _iiiiiii_ _uɔǝǝǝǝǝǝǝǝǝǝuʇ…_

 

Vincent jolt backwards, shook out the hand that had been against the glass. “ _This_ … is a Cetra?!"

 

“She's a bit creepy, isn't she?” Lucrecia walked over to join him, amused by the look so plainly on his face. She wished she could capture it, the honest vulnerability, keep it close. “You get used to her. She’s harmless. In fact, I think she's rather sad. Trapped. All alone. Gast says she looks like she’s laughing. I don’t know.” Lucrecia leaned in. “It looks like pain to me.”

 

“No wonder you’re having nightmares.” Vincent forced himself to look away from the tank, a hint of color in his cheeks.

 

“What?” Lucrecia smiled, arched a brow. “Nightmares? I’m so uncomfortable, I hardly sleep at all.”

 

Vincent bit back his response. Almost every night since the first incident of bad dreams, Lucrecia had wandered across the mansion and into his room. She appeared to be sleepwalking, mumbled nonsense, cried. And almost every night she would slip into his bed, lay her head in the crook of his arm, push her face into his chest. Only when he held her would she become still, so deeply asleep he couldn't rouse her. And almost every night, once whatever dreams that plagued her fled in his presence, he would carry her dutifully back across the mansion to her own bed.

 

Hojo was never present when he brought her back to their room, laid her in the bed, smoothed the blankets around her. Vincent assumed Hojo was spending the nights toiling away in the basement, left Lucrecia to haunt the halls in her veils of sleep. As odd as his absence was, it made the task bearable.

 

“Nevermind.” Vincent looked back at Jenova, her smile somehow even more wicked.

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent slammed the door of the truck shut once Lucrecia sat, hurried around to the drivers side. The ignition failed the first few times he turned the key, but the truck soon grumbled to life. “Let it run for a bit, it’s the cold. We don’t want to stall out going down. Carburetor engine.” Lucrecia smiled, gestured to the front of the truck with a nod. She pulled off her gloves, exhaled into her hands and rubbed them together. “I’ve heard all kinds of rumors about ShinRa’s transportation division. Mako may someday replace gasoline. Can you imagine a world where economies won’t be smashed by unstable oil prices? Where wars won’t be fought over non-sustainable commodities? Where power is generated safely and cleanly and cheaply?” Lucrecia lay her head back against the curve of the bench seat. “The ShinRa corporation is a business, nobody is fooling themselves otherwise. But there is some real good that could come from them, even if their motives are purely financial. …Mine aren’t.”

 

Lucrecia cringed, and with a small gasp curled in on herself. “Ow! Hey! Be gentle, Bean!” She held her abdomen, pushed back gently against the bulge and then turned to give Vincent a reassuring smile. “He kicks like a drunken mule. That whole not sleeping thing? Aside from being the size of a house, having someone body tackle your bladder makes getting comfortable enough to fall asleep a challenge.” Lucrecia pulled at the buttons of her coat and scoot up close to Vincent, almost hip to hip. “Here, give me your hand.”

 

Lucrecia grabbed one of Vincent’s hands in both of her own, pushed his palm firmly against her belly. His immediate instinct was to rip away from her, but he pushed through it, frozen over the manifestation of her betrayal that squirmed under his fingers. He fought away the surge of anger that flooded him, the anger at her for her presumptuousness, for her bold violation of his personal space. There was something in this that felt far too intimate; intimate beyond emotional affection, beyond even the rawness of sex. The only space left that had been theirs, where residual feeling retreat and thrived, where safety and comfort and understanding had become sacred survival, was suddenly corrupt by the presence of another. This was a moment for a loving couple, for starry-eyed parents with hope on their breath. For a family, for openness and belonging and love.

 

Vincent felt as if he were intruding on some hallowed ground, an unwelcome, dangerous voyeur. But that is what he had always been. The periphery. Lucrecia’s comments about Jenova echoed in his mind. _Trapped. All Alone. It looks like pain to me._

 

“He won’t hurt you Vincent,” Lucrecia teased, a response to the stiffness of his entire body, the red that had bloomed on his ears. “There… “ she pushed his palm a bit to the side, “right there. Feel that? That is his foot. Okay, this way… now that’s his back— I think— and his head is down here.” She gave his arm a small squeeze. “And… _you_ won't hurt him. Promise.”

 

The tenseness of his fingers eased, became fluid up into his wrist, into his arm and shoulder as his hand followed her curve. Moments ago he had been overwhelmed by Hojo’s abstract presence, but it had gone as quickly as it hit. Lucrecia hadn't grabbed his hand to hurt him, to rub it in. She had moved to share herself with him, bring him close where he could not. She wanted so desperately for his presence there, tried to manufacture a way for him to be part of it without consequence. And she knew how he struggled with words, how limited he thought himself and the boundaries only he enforced. Touch, actions, gestures, _doing_ — this was his dark language, one she tried to speak now, prayed he understood. There was nothing in that truck but them, whatever them was. The space was theirs, their moment belonging to nothing but an acceptance of now.

 

Vincent scoot himself a little closer, leaned in and down. The windows of the truck had fogged opaque. “Is that him? He's moving!”

 

“Yes, that's him.”

 

Vincent lift his other arm around her shoulders, nudged in even closer. She kept both of her hands atop his, held him against their baby. Vincent no longer seemed to mind. For a very long time they didn’t speak. It wasn’t needed. And when Vincent finally broke the silence, it surprised her. “How do you know he is a he?”

 

Lucrecia looked very somber, closed her eyes. “Mother’s intuition.” She opened one eye to peek at him, then laughed. Laugh or cry, did it matter?

 

_Because there has been nothing but sons born to the Valentines as far back as I could trace. An old superstition. Like your Lifestream. Some scientist I am._

 

"Or, you know, ultrasonic imaging.”

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Lucrecia opened the door after a series of soft knocks. She smiled when she saw Vincent, standing in his pajamas. "Hello."

 

"Do you have a minute? I… want to show you something." He looked so different without his suit, softer. It always amused her to see him this way. His hair had been washed and allowed to air dry, unstyled it held a slight messy curl.

 

Lucrecia sat on the edge of her bed, pat the spot next to her. Vincent sat too. Then he stood, pulled something out of his pocket, sat again. It was a small wooden and brass telescoping spyglass.

 

"…It was… mine. When I was little. I mean… I guess it's still mine."

 

"I know what you mean Vincent." Lucrecia smiled sweetly, a genuine smile.

 

"When I was a boy…" He paused, rubbed the back of his neck. "I was really interested in astronomy. The stars, planets, all that. I, um… wanted to be like my dad." He did not look at her. "You know what they don't tell you?" Vincent nudged her shoulder ever so slightly with his own. "You have to be _really_ good at math to be an astronomer. Any idiot with eyes can be taught to pull a trigger. I was… never very smart."

 

Lucrecia's heart hurt. A strand of his hair had fallen across his left eye, and it took everything in her to not tuck it behind his ear.

 

"Sometimes… even now I use my gun-scopes to look at the night sky. One time, I almost missed a snipe because— ahh, Turk stuff. Sorry.” He cleared his throat behind his fist. “Don't, uh, tell anybody." Vincent held the telescope out to her. She took it, examined it.

 

"Oh! Look! It says your name. V-i-n-c-e-n-t-V-a-l-y-n-t-i-n." True enough, Vincent's name, or a best attempt, had been carved into the wood in a childish scrawl. Lucrecia ran the ball of her thumb over the letters, tried to imagine an awkward little black haired boy with knobby knees carefully cutting them in. It stung her, an eruption of sorrow. She returned the telescope to him, hoped some of the hurt would pass from her with it.

 

"My, uh… father made it. For me." Vincent turned it in his hand, as if he could see some of Grimoire lingering in it.

 

"You look a lot like him, you know. Almost exactly the same." Lucrecia had met him as a girl, when her own mother answered phones in the ShinRa lobby. Back when the reception desk was almost as tall as Lucrecia was, and ShinRa took up an old warehouse, not its own postal code.

Grimoire Valentine was brought in as a consultant on an early development project. When he found out that one of the secretaries had a daughter with an interest in science, he insisted on bringing her to see the lab. This had been a life altering moment for the young girl. Grimoire wasn't like the others, stuffy men annoyed by a child— a girl— in their space. And despite her age, he had spoken to her like an adult. They met again on Lucrecia's first real project, the one that had cost Grimoire his life. "Especially your eyes. In the sunlight, they look crimson. I've never seen anyone else with eyes like his. Except for you."

 

Lucrecia had initially taken note of the striking similarities between father and son; the same strong angular jaw, the same severe cheekbones and pointed nose. But until that moment, had not thought of what it could mean for her. If Grimoire's traits had been so predominant, she couldn't help but wonder about the face of the life within her, sharp featured with eyes so intense they smoldered almost red.

 

Vincent extended the telescope and lift it to his eye, mocked a quick look through it. He was clearly embarrassed. "It, uh, doesn't work very well." He gave a sappy half smile, the right side of his lips the only ones to raise— something that signaled to Lucrecia it was as sincere as it was awkward. Everything about him was practiced and precise, with the exception of his involuntary honesty. Vincent collapsed it down again, tossed the telescope in the air and caught it with a graceful swipe of his palm.

 

"Vincent! Don't drop it!"

 

"I may be stupid, but I’m _fast_. And… it's… just a toy." He tossed it again, gentler this time. And when he caught it in his palm, he bounced his hand but he did not release it again. His fingers had coiled tightly around the polished wood, as if saying a private goodbye.

 

“Here.” He thrust the scope to Lucrecia, looked the other way. “I thought… maybe… your son might like it. You know. When he’s older. I bet he’s going to be very smart. …Just like his parents.”

 

Vincent stood abruptly, wiped the dampness of his palms against his thighs.

 

The ache in Lucrecia was purely emotional, but it racked her body the same. Her heart was in her throat, felt as if it was about to burst. So overcome with hurt, she couldn’t even manage to speak. She tried to banish the mental pictures that flooded her mind, as Vincent pointed out constellations to a messy haired boy who looked exactly like him and his father before.

 

"Vincent… if you…" her voice cracked. "If you thought… that doing something to protect the person you loved the most was the _right_ thing, even if it hurt you to the core of your being— would you still do it?"

 

His expression was one she had never seen before, on him, or anyone else. It was clear that he was trying to conceal it, maybe even thought he had been successful. She wondered what it would have been unrestrained. It was the most raw, vulnerable look she had ever seen cross his face and yet, she had no idea what it meant aside from that his response was one of absolute conviction. It took him a while to answer, and he turned for the door once he did. "Yeah."

 

She caught his wrist as he walked past her, on his way to exit. Lucrecia pulled herself up, wrapped her arms around his neck. “He _will_ be. Smart, and deep, and gentle and kind. Just like his parents. He will. He will love it. I’ll give it to him, I promise.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

 

Vincent shift, uncomfortable. “Sure.”

 

“And for… _talking_ to me. For telling me.” Lucrecia had found a tendril of him, the real him, under so much rubble. She never wanted to let go of it. She wanted to wrap herself in it, to pull and pull until… “Your father was very proud of you.”

 

Vincent put both hands on her shoulders and moved her gently to the side. The warmth of his sentimentality had gone from his face. “Yeah. Well. I'm not. …Goodnight, Lucy.”

 

 


	12. Dog [mildly NSFW]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening: [ Mercy - IAMX ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7IYmiwHPHc)

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Dog_

 

 

 

The door to Vincent’s bedroom pushed open, allowed lingering light from the hallway to spill inside. Quick, soft footsteps moved across the floor, stopped at his bedside. Lucrecia collapsed onto the bed next to him, as she usually did. She pushed up against him, worked her arms beneath his, mumbled horrible senseless words. Vincent could feel Sephiroth bump against his lower back. He sighed, turned over to face her but did not open his eyes. He hated this ritual more than any other, wished for a world in which he could pull her in close to him, wrap her in his blankets, comfort her nightmares with kisses instead of empty words. It seemed unnecessarily cruel for her to do this, and for a moment, he allowed himself to wonder if she did it on purpose.

 

_If she is happy, I don’t mind._

 

She was married, and very pregnant. And although she spent her days with her husband, joked with him, fussed over him, straightened the collar of his lab coat, passed him kind and gentle gestures, she seemed to have an abundance of affection to spare for Vincent. He hated it, hated how she touched him, touched his face, smoothed his hair. He hated how she leaned against him, how she held his arm when they walked. She had left him, trapped him in the debris of her residual feelings, and the hell of his own that never extinguished.

 

_If she is happy, I don’t mind._

 

He had tried so hard to stay professional, to be reverent to her and her wishes. To be respectful even to Hojo. Vincent knew he was nothing but a Turk, a ShinRa accessory with no place at all. Hojo had told him not to confuse her kindness for affection. And if that is what it was, what it had been— misplaced kindness— confusing was painfully, woefully inaccurate. He was overcome with a surge of indignation, resentful of the fact she had grabbed his hand, forced him to feel the baby that wasn’t his, that he wanted to be. “Go back to…” He opened his eyes.

 

Lucrecia draped an arm across his chest, snuggled in close. She was naked.

 

Vincent froze, his breath caught in his throat. His heart had begun to race, hammered so hard he feared it would burst free from his ribs. “Lucrecia,” he snapped, gave her shoulder a gentle shake. “Get off of me.”

 

“Duplicate. Contact. Infect. Imposter,” she mumbled, snuggled into him tighter. She lift her thigh over his in an attempt to be closer, rubbed up the length of his groin, nuzzled her face into the heat of his neck. He almost hit her. _Almost_.

 

“Oooookay, Lucy. It’s time to leave. Now. Right now. Get. Off.” He shook her harder, gripped her biceps in a cautious attempt to touch nothing. Her leg had pinned his swell down against his belly, an ache under her weight. He pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes, ground his palms against them, a desperate attempt to block out the imagery that flooded him.

 

The spread of her legs, of the warm and the wet, the taste of her tongue. The curve of her back, the fullness of her breasts, a body burned into his memory, the soft, pleading noises she made with his mouth between the heat of her thighs—

 

And the sound of that thing, that fucking monstrosity in the tank, it’s gaping grin, heaving, panting, moaning and

 

… _Viiiiiiiiiinceeeeeeeeeeennnnntttttt…_

 

“Lucy, _please_. Please.” He dropped his hands from his face, made a final attempt to peel her off. He could smell her, the scent overpowered him, a call to something primal beyond love and trust and respect.

 

_Dog. You’re a dog, a dog, a…_

 

Vincent grabbed her arm again, shook her firmly. She did not wake. When he removed his hand from the crook of her elbow his eyes went wide, pupils full and yawning in the darkness. His palm was glistening with wet. Her breasts were leaking.

 

And then it was Hojo where he had been, between her legs, between her chest, a basal rhythm of life and love. And then it wasn’t Lucrecia at all, no sex. Something endlessly more appealing, just Hojo, just the sound of teeth scattering, of bone snapping, of splitting skin and a rain of scarlet, blood and shit and piss and death, and—

 

Vincent had grabbed himself, worked himself free from his cotton pants, bounced his wrist to a menagerie of destruction, to the circle of love and hate and life and death. He came so hard he cried out, formless and beastly.

 

It was not relief he felt, but guilt, consuming and colossal. It became a pit that opened beneath him, made him feel as if he was falling. He made a fist around the stringy white between his fingers, that snaked down his wrist, then opened them again. Better on his hand then into her, better into the void than into a life. For the first time, he was thankful her baby was not his, no matter how hard he wished it was. His desire to stop the cycle outweighed his personal longing. He knew there was something wrong in himself… something broken, something he was terrified to pass on, to inflict on another.

 

Hojo had called him a rabid beast. A dog. A monster. He had not been the first. And they had not been wrong.

 

Vincent looked away from the mess in his hand to Lucrecia’s sleeping face. There was nothing sexual about her, even in her nakedness. She was nearly ethereal in her innocence, with her dark fluffy lashes and the part of her lips, sleeping deeply, curled up around him for safety and comfort.

 

She nuzzled against him, the fear gone from her voice, from the words that trailed off into sleeping silence. “…Imposter.”

 

His heart broke, for the thing he wanted to be, knew he was not.

 


	13. Imposter

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_Imposter_

 

 

 

Lucrecia leaned against the frame of the massive pocket doors, watched Vincent at the piano. In the past she had frequently pushed him to play happier tunes, uptempo. _“It’s so drab and dusty in here— play something cheery!”_ Vincent would respond with a solemn nod and play exactly a funeral dirge. And that, in it’s own way, had filled the mansion with a loving light. It had made her laugh, and Vincent’s dry and deadpan sense of humor was something he showed only to her. She knew it, something precious.

 

Now he play some sort of sad, stoic thing for nothing but himself; a glance at the sheet music was titled _Requiem in D Minor._ The music filled the emptiness of the mansion, echoed against the worn wood and warped windows. It had summoned her from her studies. And where she had once wanted happiness, she found comfort in the haunting melody. It felt like the only real thing that remained.

 

Vincent stopped and stiffened when he heard a floorboard creak under her weight. He ushered the photograph of his dead nameless friend back under the sheet music, protective and possessive. The sunlight full of whirling dust had landed in thick strips across his face, revealed the deep and impossible red of his eyes. “Am I disturbing you? I’m sorry.”

 

“No. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I wanted to listen.” She walked to him. “You never did tell me where you learned to play like that.”

 

Vincent shut the cover over the keys, turned all the way around on the bench. He shrugged dismissively.

 

_You never tell me anything._

 

“My mom… she, uh, sort of lost her… sight. Her ability to, uh, see things. First. When she got sick.” Vincent did not elaborate on his definition of _sick_ or _sight_. He hoped she wouldn't ask, would take his explanation literally.

 

_What you think._

 

“She was an artist. An oil painter.” He thought of the faces she used to paint, the beautiful, photo realistic dreamy dark portraits. Thought of how they had become stranger, grotesque and messy, until the skillful, purposeful strokes had become random smears of primary color. “And… it was… hard. For her. She was upset, and confused a lot. But she always loved music. My dad was working all the time. It was just us. So, I… uh, I taught myself. How to play. For her.”

 

_How you feel._

 

“She said… listening to my music was… That it made the world make sense again. That she could see things the way she used to. Like she was painting.”

 

“Vincent… your parents were so important to you, weren't they?” Lucrecia held out her hand to him, palm up. “Come with me. I want to… tell you something.”

 

  

 

†††

 

 

 

The room next to the mansion’s conservatory had been converted into a makeshift medical bay. The doctor in town had issued a warning about the coming winter, something about a farmer’s almanac and storm predictions. He suggested the setup for Sephiroth's delivery in case of a blizzard, claimed it would be easier for him to come up than her to go down. Hojo had planned to transport himself and Lucrecia back to Midgar in the final month, but agreed that the setup was a worthwhile addition. It served to make the injections far easier and kept questions from being raised. The room was outfit with some old and makeshift equipment, including the ultrasound machine. Lucrecia gave a long, cautious look down the hallway before they entered. She had laced her fingers between Vincent’s, tugged him along behind her.

 

Lucrecia pulled the ultrasound cart up close to the bed, turned it on. She stacked some pillows and climbed up, shift into position. She lift her shirt, wiggled down the waistband of her skirt. “Please hand me that container,” she pointed to a bottle on the cart just out of reach. Vincent did as she had asked, handed it to her. She thanked him when he did, scoot her legs to the side to make a space for him. “Sit down with me.”

 

Vincent sat, though he was clearly uncomfortable. He straightened his tie because he didn’t know what else to do. _I shouldn’t be here._ His ears were hot. _This isn’t my place._

 

Lucrecia squirt the ultrasound gel onto her belly, smeared it around with the probe. The screen flashed and fuzzed with movement, but nothing meaningful. “Sorry, it will take me a bit. It’s kind of hard to do this on yourself, and I’m usually only looking at tumors on rats.”

 

Vincent watched her from the side of his eye instead of the screen, felt a stab of hurt when her face illuminated with a smile. “There he is! Look, see him?”

 

The thing on the screen was grainy gray, formless shapes that were supposed to mean something other than _outsider_ or _betrayal_ or _imposter_ or _intruder._ Lucrecia, in her sleepwalking nightmares, often said the world ‘imposter’ over and over. Vincent couldn’t help but think she was speaking of him, somehow giving a voice to the fears that he could not. He humored her and forced himself to look, a quick and hollow glance. “No. I don’t. Woah! Is that… his spine?”

 

Lucrecia adjusted the probe. “Yep! Look, there is his little hand.”

 

Vincent’s eyes widened, completely awestruck. “You can see… all his bones. The tendons and… he’s getting really squirmy! H-hey! Maybe you should stop, I don’t think he likes this!” Vincent looked very concerned.

 

“Why would you say that?” She was shocked by his reaction, blinked away her surprise.

 

“You probably wouldn’t like being blasted with high frequency sound waves either…! We can’t hear it, but maybe he can! And maybe you're scaring him, maybe it hurts his ears— ”

 

“Oh Vincent, he’s fine! I promise! I wouldn’t hurt him.”

 

_It’s not my place. Impostor._

 

Vincent watched the little thing move on the screen, admired the vertebrae in the baby’s back, the relatable and identifiable movements of Sephiroth's fingers. When Sephiroth made a fist, Vincent did too. And when the baby spread his fingers, Vincent did as well. He didn't notice that he had, or that he was leaning closer into the screen despite himself, curious. “…He really is a _person_. A whole… tiny person. And you… _made_ him.”

 

Lucrecia’s heart beat so hard she felt lightheaded. _You made him, Vincent_. She moved the probe again, aiming for a clear shot of Sephiroth’s face. “What do you think?”

 

“…That’s his face, from the side! And there is his chin… and his nose… hey, he’s pretty cute. He's… I… …I think… this is way more interesting than looking at stars.”

 

Lucrecia admired the shape of Vincent’s profile, so obviously the same as Sephiroth’s even through the blurry ultrasound. Her eyes filled with tears. “It is a bit hard to see here, and it will be even clearer when he's out. Even still, I can tell he doesn’t look very much like me, does he? I’m glad. I love his nose the best. I have such a little nose. His,” Lucrecia started to reach upward, she meant to lay a finger on the tip of Vincent’s. “It looks exactly like his—”

 

“Ah, good. You’re already in here.” Hojo pushed his back into the door, his hands occupied with a tray. “Is it still positioned occiput anterior? That makes the injections easi—”

 

Vincent stood with almost impossible reflexes. “What did you say?!”

 

Hojo jerked in surprise, almost dropped the tray. Three syringes and multiple vials were piled atop gauze and medical tape. Lucrecia jolt upright. “What in the hell is he doing in here?” Hojo fumed.

 

“ _Injection_?! W-wh-what injection?” Vincent looked accusingly to Lucrecia, who had covered her face with both of her hands, then back to Hojo. “Is something wrong?” He waited a moment for Lucrecia to answer, or Hojo, but he was no longer generous with his patience. “What injections? What are you talking about?!”

 

Hojo slammed down the tray, “This doesn’t concern you, Turk! Run along and play with your guns!”

 

Vincent swiped up one of the vials on the tray, squint at the label. “What is this?!”

 

“Vincent, please!!” Lucrecia moved her hands, her face awash in tears. She had never seen Vincent react to anything with such vigor. “You don’t understand, you—”

 

 

‘ _All of this aside… if we were somehow able to create a modern Cetra… we could change the whole world for the better, right?’_

 

 

“No. No way! You… you are injecting parts of… that-th-that THING?! That fucking…t-two thousand year old _monster_ Gast found in some fucking cave?!” Vincent’s attention snapped back to Lucrecia. “Why would you do this?! How could you?! He's a p-p- _person_ , not an experiment! That’s your _son_!”

 

Hojo took a bold, long stride forward. He shoved his pointer finger into the nape of Vincent’s chest, twisted it like a knife. “That’s right! It is _our_ child, not yours. _This. Is. Not. Your. Place_!”

Vincent’s posture stiffened, but his expression went slack. He conjured his father’s kind and weathered face, felt the weight and warmth of his dad's hands on his shoulders.

 

 

‘… _We’ll find a place for you.’_

_._

_._

_._

 

 

Hojo jabbed him again, harder. “You are a Turk, a glorified bodyguard. Nothing more! I’ve always taken you for a complete idiot, but a even a simpleton with as much training as you should be able to identify boundaries. This is _my_ wife, _my_ son, and _my_ project. We are both scientists! And you are nothing but a _dog_.”

 

“Hojo… stop,” Lucrecia sobbed, her voice weak and lost.

 

Vincent shoved past Hojo, stood over Lucrecia. “Get up. We’re leaving.” She shook her head frantically, lost for words. Vincent scooped her up off the table, held her firmly and with no regard for her comfort. She struggled against him.

 

“Put down my wife this instant! I will have you dismissed! I don’t care how fond Veld is of you, you will be terminated!” Hojo moved to block the door.

 

“Don’t care.” Vincent bounced Lucrecia to reposition her, gripped her tighter. She pounded against him with balled fists, cried too hard to form coherent words. Vincent’s face was flat, a compliment to the monotone of his voice. “Move. Hojo. Now.”

 

“Put me down! Leave him alone! I’m doing this as much as he is!” Lucy’s palm caught Vincent across the jaw, then again. He didn’t care, or even seem to notice. “You’re _hurting_ me!!”

 

That, he did. He set her down, dropped his head. Defeated. _Imposter. “_ …I’m sorry. _”_

 

Hojo scoffed. “You are out of control! Do not think for a moment there won't be serious consequences for this. To think of all the vouching Veld has done for you! You are damn lucky you have been useful, but I will insist you be swapped out! Do not think there won't be consequences for this. And don’t bother with your little reports. President ShinRa has already been informed. The interest in a human dousing rod for his mythical Promise Land far outweighs any concerns you may express. All of them have been considered. Save your self-righteousness for the people you slaughter and leave us to do our jobs while you do yours.”

 

Vincent tightened his fingers around the vial in his palm. It was safe here, in the forced apathy, in the rules of authority, in the truth of Hojo’s words. The deeper he went, the less it hurt. He nodded ever so slightly to Hojo, started for the door.

 

“Oh, Vincent?” Hojo’s voice caught him in the back, just before he passed through the doorframe. The Turk turned obediently, shoulders slumped.

 

With a smirk, Hojo gave the ShinRa salute.

 


	14. Frostbite

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Frostbite_

 

 

 

It was snowing softly, fat lazy flakes of white against a dreary gray sky. The mountain skyline would have been breathtakingly beautiful, if he could have seen it. But the details of the world were lost to his rage. Vincent shoved his hands into his pockets, walked briskly onward.

 

By the time he had reached the reactor, his nose ears and fingers were a bright, angry red. He struggled to enter the manual override code for the security airlock, any feeling having fled his hands. Numb and trembling, He was finally able to enter the correct sequence and shouldered through the door. The heat of the reactor was such a drastic difference from the temperature outside that his skin screamed and burned, but he didn’t care.

 

Vincent followed the path that Lucrecia had taken him down previously, having memorized the twists and turns, the steps, the dipping wires and claustrophobic tunnels. And there was his strength. Nobody ever thought he paid attention. He _always_ paid attention. Vincent had long ago learned to turn being seen as slow and soft spoken into his greatest asset. People talked openly around him, assumed he didn’t understand, didn't care, wasn't listening. They were careless with what they said, what they showed. More, he remembered.

 

He swiped his master keycard through the slot that sat next to the Jenova chamber, punched in Lucrecia’s access code. The door hissed open, and he pushed through.

 

“Vincent?!” Gast’s attention snapped up from his desk. He dropped his pen, startled. “What are you— what—”

 

Vincent pulled the vial from his inner suit jacket pocket, slammed it onto the desk in front of the scientist. His nose was running, the meld of his upper lip slick, though he didn’t seem to even notice.

 

“What is this?” Gast picked it up, adjust his glasses. “T98-755-PBSC…” He looked up to Vincent, then back at the vial, turned it in his hands. “This is… PBSC. Peripheral blood stem cells. From… oh… no. _No_.” Gast stood, turned in a circle. “…Hojo… You saw this?”

Vincent nodded meekly, melted snow dripping from the ends of his hair.

 

“That’s what this has been about. God damn it, I _knew_ it, I knew!” Gast smashed his fist on the desktop. “I didn’t want to think… or believe… or— They’ve planned this whole thing! Their 'marriage,' this baby…!” Spit flicked from Gast’s lips as he yelled, as his words echoed around the chamber. He fell back into his chair, dropped his head into his hands. He composed himself, drew a large breath and held it. When he exhaled, he seemed to calm. “I’ll notify ShinRa. They can send someone to collect them, bring them back to Midgar. Lucrecia can be quarantined, and whatever is in her can be… ah, shit.”

 

Vincent shook his head. “They know.”

 

“What do you mean they _know_? What do they know?!”

 

“Hojo’s promised President ShinRa that this experiment will result in a way to locate the Promise Land. ‘A human dousing rod,’ he called it.”

 

Gast couldn’t help but laugh, but there was no happiness in it. “And you've been kept out of all this from the top? Well, ShinRa’s interest in this research was to link the Jenova specimen to an abundance of mako. We were to find the mechanism the Cetra used and re-create it. With _machines_!! Hojo took a shortcut. And President ShinRa… that greedy scumbag doesn’t care a lick about ethics, as long as his pockets get to be as fat as he is.” Gast sighed, dropped his head again. “So absolutely reckless,” he sighed, spoke to himself, at himself. “I suppose the good thing in this whole mess is that Lucrecia’s pregnancy seems to be progressing normally, though this would explain why she has seemed so sickly.”

 

“Nightmares.” The word escaped from Vincent, even though he hadn't thought it. “She has been… sleepwalking. She says… things. Shakes. She gets really cold, she’s scared, doesn’t know where she is.” Vincent’s eyes met Gast’s, but he tore them away. “…She wanders around at night, usually ends up in my bedroom.”

 

“And where is Hojo while his pregnant wife is roaming around in the middle of the night foaming at the mouth?” Gast picked up the vial, peered into as if he could see some answer in it.

 

“The basement, probably. He’s never there when I bring her back to their room and—” Vincent held both hands up, shook his head furiously. “It's not like that! Not… anymore.”

 

Gast straightened, squint at Vincent. “ _Anymore_?! Wait a damn minute here, what else am I missing? Am I the only one who isn’t involved in some secret… backstabbing love triangle sub-plot?! Boy, you were supposed to protect her, not _fuck_ her!”

 

Vincent grabbed the desk by its edge, and with a single swipe, overturned it. Glass shattered, papers fell and fluttered, and Gast shoved his chair backward, out of the way. He stood, stepped back, stunned into speechlessness. _The Berserker_.

 

Gast had known Vincent Valentine for many years. He was one of the few elite members of ShinRa; personal security to the executives, including the President himself. And as Gast had chosen Lucrecia and Hojo as partners out of so many potentials, Veld had hand picked Vincent for ShinRa's priority project. The Turk was reliably aloof and detached — a cold, expert, precision killer. Polite and obedient, and absolutely ruthless. Nothing phased him. Not for many, many years. Now the Turk stood among the chaos of a mess he had made in an outburst over an exasperated jab, of rolling test tubes and tools and papers. Vincent pound at his temples with the heels of his hands, almost unrecognizable in the laces of his sorrow.

 

“I _know_! I know, I fucked up okay?!” He shook his head, raked his fingers along his scalp. “I fucked up, and…” Vincent let his hands fall, lift his eyes to meet Gast’s. For a moment, he looked like a scared and lost little boy, not a high ranking agent of a mega corporation. “What do I do? How do I help her?”

 

Gast suppressed his own surprise and trepidation at Vincent's reaction, took a step forward and touched him on the bicep. The betrayal of Lucrecia had hit him hard— but the support of human experimentation by the ShinRa was a betrayal of another kind. The implications were pristinely clear on his anguished face— what else had Vincent done without question, trusting so completely in the ShinRa? How many people had he personally hurt or killed via ShinRa command — and for what version of what story? Gast was lost for words as he watched Vincent’s identity crumble. The scientist tried to think of orders, something concrete and structured to give him, prop up the walls of his world.

 

“I’m going to run some experiments of my own. Keep in mind that there is a chance that the two of them are successful, and produce a healthy offspring. If that’s the case, Hojo owes me a _lot_ of drinks. In the meantime, keep an eye on Lu. Document everything. This whole sleepwalking thing is concerning, but pregnancy hormones can cause all sorts of madness, including vivid dreams.”

 

Gast sighed, continued. “There is a big, big difference between intelligence and _wisdom_. Lucrecia is a brilliant scientist. But for everything else, she thinks with her heart and not her head. I know she believes that she is doing some big noble thing. She’s wanted to save the whole world and everyone in it since the day I met her. But often, the most noble things are in the quiet, unglamorous places.”

 

Vincent looked beyond Gast to Jenova, who watched them with her one bulging eye and depraved, gaping grin.

 

“As far as the others are concerned, everything is normal. Same with your reports back to ShinRa. They don’t know we know, okay? Keep an eye on Hojo. Anything that seems strange to you, physically, with Lucrecia… alert me right away.” Gast looked again to the vial in his hand. “And if you have any gods— ask them for mercy in case we've just opened the gates of hell.”

 


	15. Never, Never

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

_Never_

 

 

 

Where are you in sequencing?” Gast sat next to Lucrecia at the kitchen table across from Hojo and Vincent. The scientists took their breakfast in the kitchen, preferring the smaller, less formal setting for the often rushed morning meals. Perhaps it was an attempt to ease the undeniable tension that had settled between the four over the weeks that had passed since Vincent had found out about the injections. Where there was once banter and constant animated discussions, playful jabs and passionate exchanges, uncomfortable, resentful quiet had seeped and rot.

 

“How Interesting. President ShinRa has just held a press conference announcing the shifting focus in the new year onto The Public Safety Maintenance Department. It seems ShinRa has an interest in returning to it’s roots as a weapons manufacturer. They intend to create… a specialized military unit.” Hojo ignored Gast, flipped the newspaper open so the others could see. “Who is this in the photograph, Valentine? Standing next to our dear President in your place? Looks like the Turks have some new recruits.”

 

Vincent did not look up from his coffee mug.

 

Hojo narrowed his eyes, frustrated with the unsuccessful attempt to goad the Turk. “Have you ever considered that you’ve been sent off to Nibelheim to play nanny to two defiant old men and an unpredictable novice as a matter of… housekeeping?”

 

Vincent still did not look up. “Yep.”

 

Lucrecia stared unblinking at her plate, her food untouched and now cold.

 

“But that can’t be, can it? I wonder— surely you were informed about these developments. You couldn’t possibly be hearing about these things for the first time in a newspaper like us… common citizens.” Hojo leaned in.

 

“Hojo! Stop antagonizing the poor boy,” Gast sniffed, his mustache twitching. There was a dynamic there he now understood, so plain before him, and he felt stupid for missing it in the first place. “I asked you a question!”

 

“Actually,” Vincent cleared his throat and turned in his chair, knees first, his upper body lagging behind. He slung his left elbow over the back of the chair, the red tint of his eyes almost luminescent in the warm, ambient light. “President ShinRa seems to be very interested in the development of a new type of weapon. A _biological_ one, specifically. I wonder where he got that idea?” Vincent’s eyes were fixed on Hojo, but his attention was solely on Lucrecia as he spoke. She didn’t seem to hear him. “But I’m sure you knew that, keeping up with the news.” He smiled softly, in that perfect, practiced, vacant way.

 

Once, Vincent would have done anything to protect the utmost of classified information, ShinRa secrets that didn’t exist beyond the executives, beyond he and Veld. He no longer cared. He turned around again, grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair and worked it on. Wearing it had once been his soul source of pride. Now it felt like a cruel mockery.

 

“Interesting indeed,” Hojo smirked. “Looks like you aren’t ready for the glue factory quite yet.”

 

Gast smashed his palm against the table. The dishware shook and clattered, but Lucrecia barely flinched. Hojo pushed his glasses up his nose, and turned to face Gast. “Approximately 35,000 bases. Lu, darling. You really need to eat something.”

 

Her eyes were glassy and sunken. Her thick hair hung untended in sheets, accent the growing hollowness of her face. She didn’t respond aside from a weak move to pick up the fork, a task she struggled with. Gast eyed her with a heavy frown.

 

“Lucy, are you alright?”

 

“…It’s… not. Sick. Ah, uh…” she closed her eyes for a moment, shook her head. Her words were sloppy, nearly incoherent. “…Tired. I-I’m… tired.”

 

“I’d imagine so. Making a person from scratch is weary business. Why don't you go lay back down and take a rest day? Hojo, hurry up old man, I want your opinion on something I’ve been working on up at the reactor.”

 

Hojo glared at Gast, but understood the game. A test of reaction, a search for a tell. As far as Gast was supposed to be concerned, Hojo had no reason to object. “I will take my wife back to bed, thank you. A moment. I will help settle her in first. You can wait.” Hojo stood, reached to Lucrecia to help her up. “Come, Lu. I’ll make sure you have what you need.” She did not move. Hojo dropped to a knee, grabbed her hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Lucrecia?”

 

Her face was waxy, visibly clammy and very pale. She didn’t respond until he gave her a gentle shake. “Tired. Just… tired. I’m fine.” Hojo tried to keep his concern concealed, hide away the trip wire to their secrets. Or, to his own. He pulled himself closer to her, leaned in against her neck, spoke softly into her hair. Vincent did not miss what went between them, and despite himself, felt a rush of sympathy. It was in Hojo’s eyes, in the twitch of his lips, in the tendons of his hands as he pulled at hers, harder than he meant to. Vincent saw something there he recognized, layers of himself in a fragile, fearful love.

 

It was Lucrecia that broke the moment, disrupt the thread of solidarity. “…No.” She tried to raise a hand in protest, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere in particular. “You go on. I’m… I’ll try to eat. Then I’ll lay down… for just a bit.”

 

Hojo ran his hand up and down the small of her back with a gentle affection. There was nothing in his actions that resembled anything other than a genuine concern of a husband for his wife and child. Something Vincent had never expected to exist with any sincerity in his adversary. Hojo had become a caricature to him, but there was something undeniably human in the scientist’s interactions with his wife. “Please, Lu,” Hojo prodded, “There is no reason to be so stubborn. You aren’t proving anything with this. I can bring your breakfast into our room. Let me help you.”

 

Vincent checked his holsters, tugged at the bottom of his suit jacket to smooth it down. He walked to the doorway, crossed his hands at the wrists in front of himself and waited for the other men, ignored the conversation that continued between the couple.

 

_Not my business._

 

Lucrecia lift her eyes to the Turk, speared him in the doorway with a loaded look from across the room. Despite the distance, the tears that welled in them were obvious, desperate. Vincent looked the other way, checked his watch.

 

_Not my problem._

 

“Fine!” Hojo’s voice cracked through the kitchen as he stood suddenly, shoved both of his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “But this is folly. You are so concerned about proving your usefulness and strength that you are, in reality, accomplishing neither!” The scientist stormed to the door with Gast trailing behind him. Vincent turned to follow, but was halted with a gesture.

 

“You stay with Lu.” Gast point with his chin back towards the kitchen table, where Lucrecia still sat as if in a daze. “There are two of us and one of her. Besides, I don’t like the idea of leaving her alone like that.” His expression conveyed a private message to the Turk, one that was understood even though it was unwanted.

 

Even Hojo found agreement in that statement. “See that she rests. If anything comes up, inform me at once. Otherwise, don’t disturb her.” Vincent watched them leave, listened as their footsteps grew faint with distance, as the front door moaned open and slammed shut, leaving the two alone. He made no attempts to move from the doorway, to reposition himself or join her at the table. He didn’t even want to look at her.

 

“Come sit. Please.” Her voice was weary, beyond that of her physical fatigue.

 

He did not look up. “No.”

 

“Vincent, I need to talk to you about this… about what you saw, what happened, what we’re doing… You don’t understand!” Tears had started down her cheeks, and she pushed them away with the back of her thumb, embarrassed and broken.

 

“I don’t need to. Your science project doesn’t concern me.”

 

“If you had the opportunity to do something that made the entire world better, for everyone in it… wouldn’t you take it?! Wouldn’t you sacrifice yourself for the greater good? Especially if that meant at the same time protecting the person you care for the most?! I have to! I _have_ to do this!”

 

“Really?” Vincent narrowed his eyes, froze his anger into a cool, factual tone so precise and smooth it seared. “You scolded me once for never telling you what I think. You want to know what I think? Here is what I think. You aren’t nearly as noble or selfless as you want everyone to believe you are. Sure, some of it is genuine, but it’s about validation and praise and pride as much as any of the other bullshit you cite. Maybe I don’t tell you what I think because I know you don’t want to hear about the reality where you aren’t some flawless martyr hero.”

 

Lucrecia’s eyes went wide. She had never been spoken to that way in her life. Especially by him. "I would be _very_ careful with what you say right now Vincent, because you have absolutely no idea and if you would just—“

 

“—You don’t get to ask me that question because we aren’t talking about me. I’m nobody, Lucy— I have _nothing_. I go assignment to assignment and do what I’m told. We’re talking about you. _You_. You’re brilliant, and talented, and kind… you’re fun, and you’re this… light everywhere you go, and you… you’re surrounded by people who support you and believe in you and _love_ you but it’s never enough. Nothing is ever enough. You don’t care who you hurt, as long as it looks good enough to everyone else that you can fool yourself.”

 

“Vincent!! I’m not trying to hurt anyone! You don't understand, that's not it at all! Please!" Tears streamed down her cheeks so forcefully she made no attempt to wipe them away.

 

Vincent’s hair obscured almost half of his face, the black of it making his complexion seem even more ghostly. “No? Well your husband didn’t seem too happy just now, did he? And it’s not like he was being unreasonable. He’s worried about you and his kid, and he should be! He was right, you know. And you’re being selfish and cruel to prove some point that doesn’t even exist.”

 

“How could you say that?! If we could just… if we could talk about this… You have _no_ idea what's going on here— about any of this— because you can't be bothered! How could you say such awful things when you promised you loved me?!”

 

“Yeah, well, you promised me you wouldn’t hurt him.” Vincent made a flippant gesture to her middle.

 

“‘I’m not hurting—goddamn it, Vincent! Don’t you _dare_ act like you give a shit about this baby!” She was screaming now, tears and spit and mucus spattering behind her words. “Or me! Or anything! You’re a heartless robot running a script— a trained dog, just like Hojo says! You don’t care about anything unless it’s part of some objective, a response to an order!! You don’t care and you’ve _never_ cared!”

 

Vincent’s rapid footfalls echoed through the kitchen off the tile, a brisk, stiff charge towards her, nearly running. He stopped abruptly next to her chair, tugged at the navy fabric of his suit pants around his knees, pulled up slack enough to crouch down next to her. Vincent moved his face in close to hers, close enough that she could smell the black coffee that lingered on his lips. Her surprised blinking pushed out more tears, and she lost herself in the depth and darkness of his eyes. For a moment, she thought he may kiss her. His voice was soft and smooth and completely, wickedly flat.

 

“You’re right. I _don’t_.”

 

Lucrecia could not respond with anything but great heaving sobs, anguished cries that shook through her entire body. She buried her face in her hands to weep.

 

Vincent stood, expressionless. “Tell me when you're finished.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent had taken Lucrecia to her room as he had been instructed, though he refused to speak to her through the process. While she changed back into her nightgown, he filled a glass of water from the kitchen tap. The book he had bought her in town what seemed like a lifetime ago sat atop some papers on the nightstand. He pushed it aside with the bottom of the glass, set it down in the space that had been cleared. The dog-eared, well read book fell to the floor. He did not pick it up.

 

 

 

“ _I, uh, got you something. From the shop in town.”_

 

“ _Oh, a book! the gods themselves. Thank you, Vincent!”_

 

“ _I know you get bored out here. I thought… maybe you’d like this one. It’s kinda neat. There are all these parallel universes, and the main guy Peter, he’s a physicist. Like you. Except he’s a jerk, like Hojo. And, uh…”_

 

“ _You read it?”_

 

“ _Yeah… I’d of given it to you sooner, but I’m not a very fast reader. I'm good at shooting things, not much else. But I wanted to make sure I didn’t give you something too awful. There is…uh… there’s some weird… sex stuff in it… sorry. There wasn’t a lot to choose from.”_

 

“ _Oh, look, you’re blushing so hard! …Vincent.”_

 

“ _I, uh. I hope you like it. It’s okay if you don’t.”_

 

“ _I love it. I don’t even need to read a word of it to know I love it. Because I love you.”_

 

 

 

 

 

Vincent turned to exit, without a gesture or a word. Nor did he stop when she called out to him, begged. “Please,” she wept. “Stay with me.”

 

He shut the door, moved to the alcove and pushed his back up against the wall on the other side. Vincent could hear her sobbing through the walls, a sound as if the house itself were crying. He lift his right leg, braced his foot against the tattered damask wallpaper, leaned his head back. Frost had etched up most of the window to the side of him, though the sunlight persevered through the glass, cast long dusty shadows.

 

Lucrecia cried for hours. And Vincent stood dutifully just outside her door, watched the shadows creep as the sun cycled on. Until exhaustion had finally silenced her, until she submit to a merciful sleep.

When she had finally gone quiet, he cracked the door and peered inside. The blankets and sheets were half off of her, the rest in a tangle on the floor. Vincent crept inside, pulled them up, gently adjust and smoothed them around her. He watched her a moment, a visual check that she had fallen asleep, that her breathing was normal, that she was safe. Her face was splotched with red, her lips swollen and parted. Tears pooled against her nose, hung off her chin. Vincent pushed them away with his fingertips. And when he spoke, it was only because he was certain she couldn't hear him. "You hurt… _me_ , Lucy."

 

He left again, closed the door as quietly as he could behind him. This time he sat, slumped into his knees and pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes until everything went white.

 


	16. Just an Accident

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

_Just an Accident_

 

 

 

Vincent felt Hojo’s presence in his heavy looming silence, but didn’t bother to look up from his paperwork when he was spoken to. “How is she?”

 

“Still sleeping. She woke up once, had to use the bathroom. But she wasn’t really conscious.” Vincent set his pen down with measured precision.

 

“Good. She needs the rest.” Hojo tapped the tabletop with two of his knuckles, perhaps to fill the silence. “Gast was lagging behind, but he will be back shortly. Once he arrives you are clear to do a perimeter check and lockdown. I’ll be in my lab in case she wakes and asks for me.”

 

Vincent stood, suspicious. “You let him stay back by himself? It’s storming out… and it’s almost dark. You were on foot.”

“He is an adult. He said he wanted to check something and to go ahead. It is not my job to babysit him. It's _yours_. If you’re so concerned about it, go and fetch him. Excuse me, I have work to attend to.” Hojo gave Vincent a dismissive wave before he hurried off. Vincent glanced to the row of towering ornate windows along the exterior wall of the dinning room, frowned as the leaded glass rattled from the forceful gusts outside.

 

Although Vincent had felt a moment of genuine sympathy for Hojo, he did not trust him. He was doubtful Hojo even knew the extent of his wife's ailing, of her strange behavior and wanderings; because he was never present to see it. If Vincent decided to go after Gast, that left Lucrecia alone. Gast would have to find his own way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

_Valentine knows. I am not concerned. Aside from a knee jerk reaction to ethical qualms, he knows his place. He has been quite useful in protecting the subject, specimen and perimeter with the exception of an occasional outburst. I recommend further correctional training for him when this project is concluded. Should he show further defiance, I will inform you at once. Gast, however, remains unaware. As long as this continues, the experiment should proceed without disruption. Gast is too invested in the subject matter to be objective. At this time I am formally requesting medical personnel be sent by the 31st. I still intend to bring the subject back to Midgar, but precautions must be taken. We cannot trust the local physician with such delicate matters._

 

_-H._

 

 

Gast took off his glasses, rubbed at his eyes. Hojo’s notes had been nearly impossible to decipher, but after digging through other papers and correspondence, he was able to compose a key with some accuracy. “You absolute bastard,” he sighed, closed his fist around the last paper he had decoded, both thankful for and disgusted at his colleagues pristine record keeping. “You think everyone but you is an idiot, don’t you?”

 

He stood, returned his glasses to their place on his nose. Gast returned the papers and notes to the places he had found them, with the exception of the most recent letter to ShinRa. That went into the pocket of his lab coat. He’d confront Hojo with it when he returned to the mansion, ask what it said with Vincent armed and at his side. Gast’s anger was consuming. It was partly that Hojo had done all of this under his nose, used his budget, his credentials and reputation. And part was that he had been excluded in the first place. There was not a single living person with a greater interest in the Cetra, who had invested more time or research into the subject.

 

Gast wound through the corridors of the reactor, stomped along to a soundscape of clanking pipes and hissing steam. He had set up his own version of Hojo and Lucrecia’s experiment in a separate area, a control room down near the heart of the reactor, a place Hojo would never have business going.

 

“You absolute bastard,” Gast cursed again under his breath, “I was the first scientist hired by ShinRa! I am the one who is responsible for the conversion of mako into electricity!” He smashed the corner of his briefcase into the wall as he stormed forward, raging. “I engineered this damn reactor! I built the machinery at Cosmo Canyon! Hojo! I'm the head of the goddamned Science Department! I trusted you! And for what? So you could climb to victory upon my back?”

 

Gast opened the door to the control room, let it slam shut behind him. He tossed down his briefcase atop a metal table, cracked his knuckles. He glanced to the row of cages he had set along the wall, jerked back in surprise when he saw that one of them had been opened. He moved in to inspect it closer, made note of the cage number. Four. The hinged door hung crookedly from the mouth of the cage. “You’re the one that bit me, aren’t you? Feisty thing.” Gast clicked on his pocket flashlight, swung the beam inside the metal box. “Where’d you go?”

 

The control room overflowed with cables, wires, beams and pipes. The heart of some great, mechanical beast. It hummed and pumped, pistons slamming. He ducked under a series of valves, wove through wrapped wires. His flashlight beam cut into corners and into shadows, until it land on something that was not supposed to be there.

 

What it was, he could not say.

 

It stood in the corner, twice his height but half as thin. It’s body was a grotesque mass or bulging, weeping growths. It’s flesh had the characteristic texture of a rat tail, and it’s legs were digitigrade. The thing bashed its head repeatedly into the wall.

 

“Oh gods forgive me,” Gast’s breath had caught in his throat, his words exhaled like a posion. It turned when it heard him, rotate it’s head vertically until it’s face was completely upside-down.

 

It’s face. _His_ face.

 

The thing had Gast’s face, his nose and chin and lips— but the eyes were black and beady, remnants of the rodent. It opened it’s mouth, inky black dribbling down its front.

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Gast had not returned. Vincent hoped he had chosen to stay the night in the reactor rather than attempt the descent down the mountain in the storming dark, a smart choice from a smart man. The thought had been reassuring enough that he had allowed himself to lay down, attempt to sleep. Lucrecia had not woken again, nor did she show any signs of doing so when he last checked on her.

 

Vincent had just drifted into a light sleep when he suddenly woke to the sound of his bedroom door, a long, mournful groan of old wood. He turned to look, squint against the light. Lucrecia’s silhouette was visible, lit from behind by the hallway lights that pierced into the darkness of his room. He struggled against his exhaustion to force himself up, grab her before she climbed into bed with him as she usually did. She took a few staggering steps forward then stopped, swayed silently in place.  He watched her a while, her feet stationary but her upper half wavered.

 

“…Lucy?” Vincent sat, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He tossed the quilt from his legs and stood.

 

She did not move. “Calamity. From the skies. Impostor. Bleeding. Bleeding. Burning. Wound. Wounded. Infected.”

He sighed wearily, moved to her. “Okay Lucy. It’s just a bad dream. Let’s get you back to bed. You want some water?” He stopped suddenly a few feet away from her, sniffed. A pungent, foul odor overtook the room.  It was a smell he knew well, the scent that immediately followed death. Dead people didn’t hold their bowels.

 

“…Lucy? Hey, Lu!” Vincent kept his eyes on her dark figure, pat the wall for the light switch and flipped it on. Tarry black stool ran down the inside of Lucrecia’s legs, pooled at her feet. The front of her nightgown was covered in vomit.

 

“Death. 8:57am. A calamity from the skies. Everything dies. Nine. Nine. Nine.” Her usually bright green eyes seemed clouded, far away. She was trying to focus on him, but seemed to not see him at all.

 

Vincent’s lips part wordlessly, overcome by worry and the stench of sickness. He did not allow himself to linger in his fear. “You’re okay. It’s just a bad dream. I’m with you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He pulled his black short-sleeved shirt over his head, shook his hair out of his face. Vincent took a deep breath and held it, scooped her up in his arms. For a moment, he considered opening the basement door, yelling down for Hojo, but the thought went as quickly as it had come.

 

He carried her to the bathroom instead. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up okay? Don’t worry. I won’t look.” Vincent pushed in the light switch with his elbow, then set her in the tub. He worked her soiled nightgown over her head and tossed it into the corner. He positioned his hand beneath the faucet to gauge the water temperature, kept the other on her.

 

The running water seemed to restore some consciousness to her and gasping, she grabbed Vincent’s bare arm. He turned his attention to her, to the look of confusion and panic that erupted on her face. “Hey Lu, there you are.” Vincent smiled, that lopsided, genuine smile of his. “You’re okay. You just had an accident. No big deal, right?” His heart had nearly stopped. Lucrecia’s fingers dug with such force into his forearm that an angry pink spread on his skin beneath them.

 

“Vincent…” Tears streaked her cheeks, dribbled off her chin. She tried to pull herself up, throw her arms around him. Her entire body heaved with small, tinny sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. _I’m so sorry_.”

 

"I've cleaned up a lot worse. You should see a ShinRa company holiday party sometime." He shook his head softly, wavy unstyled black falling across his brow. “Hey…. Stop. It’s alright. I'm just glad you're okay.” Still crouched next to the tub, he moved a bit closer. He couldn’t help himself, cupped her cheek in his palm. “Or maybe not. I don’t care about anything, remember?” He smiled again, pushed some of her hair back from her face.

 

She only wept harder. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Her cries turned into breathless heaves. “I didn’t want to hurt you, make you feel trapped. You’re always protecting everyone else— I wanted to protect _you_. I didn’t know what to do.”

 

He could barely understand her through the cracking desperation of her voice. “Lucy, listen to me. Calm down. Everything is okay. I need you breathe.” She held his wrist with both hands against her face, shook so forcefully he had to brace himself with his free hand against the lip of the tub. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. He's _yours_ and you didn't want him. You don't _want_ him.” she sobbed.

 

Vincent’s breath caught in his chest, as if it had been forced out of him by the weight of her words. All sound was lost but a piercing ring in his ears. “…What?! Shh, shh. You’re _sick_. And confused. I need you to calm down. Breathe.” He pulled away from her. " _Don't._ " 

 

“Please, Vincent!”

 

In that moment, he hated her.

 

“I’m so sorry. You have to listen to me— He's your baby. Sephiroth is your son. I’m so sorry, please—”

 

“ _M-mine_? My… son?” Rage flashed across his face, with no attempt made to mask it. “Don’t you _fuck_ with me, Lucy!”

He stood, turned away from her. He raked his fingers against his scalp, grabbed his hair between them in fistfuls. “How… _No_ , I… Why would you do this?! Why would you _lie_ to me?!” He spun back around to face her, his eyes shimmering with wet. “Why wouldn’t you tell me?!”

 

“I tried…! I tried! I tired… I’m so sorry! I’m not lying, I’m not! I was pregnant before Hojo and I ever even spoke about this— You said you didn’t want children, you don’t care—”

 

“—You lied to him, too?! Does he know?!”

 

“No! I didn't know what to do! Vincent… please…! I just… wanted… I wanted to be with you, I love you so much, I wanted to leave and I panicked and…”

 

Vincent knelt down next to the bathtub again, grabbed her around the shoulders. He bent into her, squeezed her against his bare chest. “…You did… didn’t you? That’s what that— You asked me to take you away from here. It was so strange, so unlike you and I didn’t…” His throat was tight, his nose burned. “This is all my fucking fault! I didn’t understand! I thought I was _supporting_ you and… all I wanted was for you to be happy… I wasn’t… god damn it, Lucrecia! Why didn’t you just tell me?! If I had known, I’d of never…”

 

Lucrecia seemed to relax in his arms, her face pushed into the side of his neck.

“I can't believe you lied to me! All this time! I stayed out of it because I thought it wasn't my place! If I’m his dad, I'm pretty damn sure that is my place! You’ve been experimenting on my son, in front of me knowing how I felt and… you made me sit off to the side, took this entire experience away from me— all this time I thought— You’ve been getting worse and worse and Hojo…” Vincent pulled back from her, looked to the bulge of her abdomen sticking out of the water. He stared speechless, until a droplet disrupt the surface of water.

 

It was blood.

 

His face snapped to hers, and his eyes went wide when he found the source. Scarlet trailed down her cheeks in the pathway her tears had cut, streamed in a mixture of mucus from both nostrils. “Lucy!?” He shook her gently, a limp tilt of her head her only response. “Lucrecia!?” He shook her harder this time. Plumes of red blossomed in the water from under her. “Lucy!!”

 

He stood, worked his arms beneath her thighs and arms, lift her. “That’s it, this stops _now_.” The slickness of their skin made it difficult for him to hold her. “I’m not staying out of this anymore. I'm going fix this. I'm going to fix everything. But right now I'm going to get you help. We’ll find Gast, he’ll know what to do. But I need you to stay with me. Because I have a _lot_ to fucking say about this!!”

 

He adjust her, made a move for the door. All of the lightbulbs in the house flickered, cracked and popped, and in an instant, the house submit to darkness.

 

 


	17. Mother

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_Mother_

 

 

 

The back of Gast’s head collided with a pipe, so hard his glasses fell from his face. He made no attempt to pick them up. His hands searched the terrain behind him frantically as he moved backwards, thoughtless movements of survival instinct and nothing more. Despite his panic, Gast was lucid enough to remember where the the main power panel was near the door to the control room. He didn’t bother fumbling for his keys, instead smashed the glass cover with his elbow.

 

He had designed and engineered this reactor, the very first of it’s kind. He had personally overseen every step of it’s construction. The future of electricity, of power, of belief and science. Nobody had shut it down before. Doing so felt like betrayal, like euthanasia. ShinRa could restart it, but Gast hoped enough time would pass that the Jenova specimen would be destroyed, its delicate maintenance disrupted. Everything he had done in his career had been to get to this point, or the one just before… before when? An obsessive pursuit of the Cetra, blind to all else. His best friend and closest colleague had betrayed him, and his prodigy too. As did the company whose current success belonged solely to him— in their move away from arms, to power of another kind. Power that helped, healed.

 

But worst and most irrational of all, the pain that cut deeper than the rest, was from the betrayal of Jenova herself.

 

His hands shook so wildly he failed to enter the master code, distracted by the thing that banged and clamored after him. When he punched the correct sequence, the entire reactor rang with the mechanical bleats of an alarm.

 

 

Emergency Shutdown Initiated

 

60 seconds to shut down.

 

Reactor 00 will power down in 59, 58, 57

 

 

Gast grabbed the control room door handle with both hands, jerked it down and to the right, flung himself into the hallway and slammed the door behind him.

 

 

52, 51, 50

 

 

He doubled over, hands to his knees, a desperate attempt to catch his breath. His heartbeat pounded in his ears and along with the screech of the alarm, he could not think. The world had gone fuzzy around him without the aid of his glasses. Gast fumbled through the hallways, a frantic attempt to feel his way, groping at nothing. He could hear the thing in the control room pounding against the door. More disturbingly, he could hear the distinct sound of of the gaskets failing. Whatever was in was about to come out.

 

 

37, 36, 35

 

 

Gast ran with his hands in front of him, smashed into pipes, stumbled over uneven flooring. The sound of metal slamming against metal cut up his spine as the door behind him was forced open. He could hear the thing lumber after him, fast, faster until…

 

“… _Nine, Nine, Nine,”_

 

Gast froze. It was the unmistakable voice of his mother…. except wrong somehow. And then there were more voices, all at once, voices he knew and voices he did not. A hymn of madness.

 

“ _kcis dna yrgnuh niaga emoh og lliw I dna dne lliw efil lla seiks eht morf ytimalac a eid lliw nus eht”_

 

 

10 seconds until shutdown

 

 

He skid to a stop outside the doorway to Jenova’s storage room, stared into the vessel that had been their lives for the past two years. The place where ambition and dreams were consumed by deceit and betrayal.  He was somehow as sad now as he was scared, as scared as he was angry. But above all else, Gast stood nearly paralyzed by guilt. Jenova stared at him from across the room with her one eye and gaping, horrific smile.

 

 

3, 2, 1

 

Reactor 00 shutdown complete.

 

 

All of the lights powered down, one at a time, darkness moving inward from the perimeter. As each light went out, the entire reactor seemed to pound until there was nothing left but still, silent black.

 

Gast could hear nothing but his own ragged breathing, and a high pitched internal hum from the sudden absence of sound. He glanced upward in the direction of Jenova, horrified to see her one eye emitting a piercing glow. He felt sick, the swirling wet heat of nausea. “What _are_ you…?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent moved through the darkness, Lucrecia limp in his arms. He could hear the distinctive spatter of fluid dribbling against the floorboards as he carried her back to his room, felt a warm wet down his lower right side. “I’m going to put you down for a minute, okay? But I’ll be right here.” He set her gently on top of his bed, tugged the quilt he had pushed aside earlier over her. By the time he had gotten her back to his bedroom, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that vague shapes served as sufficient guides.

 

Vincent ripped open the top drawer of his dresser to produce a flashlight, switched it on. He set it vertical on the nightstand, then tore through his clothing for another shirt and twisted into the first thing he grabbed, a black long sleeve thermal. He pulled out of his wet pajama bottoms, tugged a pair of dark jeans up his lanky legs, secured the belt.

 

Lucrecia whimpered in the darkness, curled in on herself. She started to cry again, soft, pleading gasps. She pushed herself upward, support by one arm. The other wrapped around the underside of her belly.

 

For a moment, he abandoned his attempt at dressing, hobbled to the bedside while working on a sock. “Lucy? You with me?” He grabbed her around the shoulders, pulled her further upright. Her milky skin was still slick, the heat of her body telling of fever. Vincent pushed a coil of wet hair from her brow, pressed the back of his wrist against it, slid down her cheek. She was almost always alarmingly cold, but now she burned with febrility. Lucrecia seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness.

 

Lucrecia doubled over against him, pushed her face so tightly against his chest it hurt him. She groaned through her teeth, the skin on the back of Vincent’s neck succumbed to the bite of her nails. He moved a hand to her abdomen, ran his fingers along its curve. Her entire belly was a solid mass, tight and smooth. His hand followed her form to her inner thighs beneath the blanket, and he pulled his fingers away from the slick and warm, tinged with blood.

 

_Hojo._

 

Vincent pushed his index finger across his lips when she focused on him, her eyes wild with panic. When he spoke, it was nearly a whisper, smooth and flat. “It is imperative that you be quiet until we get outside. I know you’re in a lot of pain. But if Hojo hears you…”

 

“Please don’t hurt him!!” Lucrecia grabbed Vincent’s jaw in both of her shaking hands. She had once hated him for his expressionless face, for his icy demeanor. Now, it was the most comforting thing in the world. “Promise me you won’t hurt him!!”

 

Vincent stared at her, unblinking, unmoving.

 

Lucrecia tried to calm her breathing, but instead exhaled a crumbling confession. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I thought I could do this. It was a mistake. They’re going to take him from me– they’re going to take him– they’re going to take my baby–”

 

Emotion began to creep into the spaces he had banished it from. He fought against the anger that swelled in his gut, spilled up into his throat and surged through his veins. Their greatest asset now was his calm focus, a gift of his precision apathy. He could not let it fail.

 

_What the hell did you think was going to happen, Lucy? That you would go live some idyllic life somewhere? That Hojo’d teach him how to throw a ball? Sephiroth’s first steps will be in a laboratory. He won’t be tucked in at night, he’ll be hooked up to wires and monitors and probes. He won’t have fun, or friends, he’ll have blood draws and endless testing. Of course they’re going to take him. He isn’t a person, not to them. He’s ShinRa property._

 

“No.” The only hint of his panic was in the throbbing pulse of his neck. “Nobody is going to take him. Or you.”

 

“Hojo, he… he… it’s not his fault, this was my idea, not his and I-I… was trying to make the best of… you didn’t want to leave the ShinRa, I didn’t want to loose my career– and Hojo… but it’s too late now, isn’t it? We’ve all lost everything. And it’s my fault– my– and they’re going to take him and–”

 

“Shh, shh. Lucrecia. Look at me. Nobody will take him.” His face was smooth porcelain, a mask. “ _Nobody_.”

 

“Please,” she begged again, the blood from her nose bright on her lips and teeth, “don’t hurt Hojo. _Promise_ me!”

 

Vincent gave a rapid, shallow nod in silence. He stood, stuffed the larger of his handguns into his belt, then worked his other sock. Last on were his boots, but he did not bother to lace them. The quilt was used in an attempt to wipe some of the lingering wet from her, then tossed to the floor. He pulled free the corners of the bedding, wound her in the sheets and blankets and lift her. “Ready, up.”

 

She gasped when he moved her, and her cry crumbled into a grimacing whimper.

 

“Square breathing. Hold for four, in for four, hold for four, out for four, keep going. Just a little bit longer. I promise I'll make it up to you— you can scream at me for the next eighteen years. And if he is as much trouble as I was… we can make it thirty. Um. If he’s as much trouble as I was, we probably won’t survive.” Vincent moved quickly through the hallways, rounded the landing on the stairs and descend them with his back pressed against the wall to aid his balance.

 

A savage wind caught him in the face when he shouldered through the front doors, so hard and so cold it stole away his breath. Tiny pelts of ice stung his skin, burned in his eyes. Vincent lowered his head and charged forward, fought against the slickness of the steps beneath the mounding snow. He pushed on to the side of the house, where he had parked the truck. The driver door stuck at first, frozen shut. He gave it a firm kick from behind, dodged a tumble of white. Vincent pushed Lucrecia in, slammed the door behind him. The key had been left in the ignition, and he twist it forward.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Vincent turned it again, and again, and again. Still, nothing. He slammed the heel of his hand against the steering column, then three more times in quick succession.  He tilt his head back, covered his face in his hands. When he let them fall, he looked to Lucrecia who held the blankets tightly around herself. Her skin and hair was visibly wet, and her entire body trembled violently.

 

“We have to go back inside. I can’t have you out here like this. We’re going to go back into the house, and I’m going to go into town and get help.”

 

“You can’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” Lucrecia’s plea was lost to the pain of another contraction.

 

“We don’t have a lot of options! You’re right, Lu. They are going to _try_ to take him. If you resist, you will be executed. And I will be the one given the order to do it.” His knuckles had gone white around the steering wheel. “But now is not the time for me to explain to you that I know exactly how this will play out because _I’m a fucking Turk and tracking and assassinating people like us is all I do_!!”

 

He turned sharply to her, his ears and nose bright red from the cold. His voice softened from guilt in both his actions and the new fear on her face. “Don’t worry about any of that, that’s my problem. Right now we need to focus on making sure you and the baby are safe. I’ll deal with the other stuff later. I promised you they won’t take him from us and they _won’t_ but I. Need. You. To. Trust. Me.”

 

Lucrecia nodded a frantic understanding.

 


	18. Please Don't Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soundtrack for this chapter is [Please Don't Go - Barcelona](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WLitrGQgHw/)  
>  
> 
> Things are going to get pretty dark (thematically and in actual events/descriptions) from here on out, so consider yourself warned for content through the end.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

_Father_

 

 

 

Vincent set her down gently in the empty bathtub and knelt next to her. He grabbed both of her hands between his own, exhaled against them and rubbed them briskly, then held them against his neck. She could feel the hammering of his heart in his carotid artery, but his face was blank and smooth in the darkness. "I'm going to go get help. I'm going to lock the door. If Hojo comes up here, tell him… tell him you couldn't sleep and you're taking a bath."

 

She grit her teeth, allowed herself to indulge in a soundless groan. He moved a hand to the back of her head, pushed his forehead against hers, nose to nose. "We can do this. I will be right back."

 

Lucrecia shook her head, silent tears streaming. "I don't want you to leave me. I'm so scared—“

 

_You never tell me what you think._

 

Vincent's deep eyes seemed black in the darkness, interlocked with hers. A confessional. “…Me too. I've never been scared like this before.”

 

_What you feel._

 

“I fucked up. And I’m sorry. You think I don’t care. I _do_. I feel… everything. Too much. And I went through a _lot_ to make it stop. My feelings… they hurt people, Lucy. I’m not a good person. I thought I was _protecting_ you.”

 

Lucrecia pulled him against herself, her voice choking. “I needed you! And not in any of the ways you think! I needed you to stay with me!”

 

“I've been with you! Every single day, every step of the way— you have no fucking idea how much standing back and watching all this happen _wrecked_ me, Lucy! But I did it, I never left you— I've always been here and—”

 

“You _did_!” There was frustration in her voice, along with the fear and the pain. “You weren't there anymore! You shut me out! I didn't want a bodyguard, and I didn't want a _brick,_ I wanted you!!”

 

Vincent broke away from her and stood quickly. He moved to the medicine cabinet above the sink and tore through it, toiletries scattered into the bowl of the sink, to the floor. He flipped open a straight razor, its edge revealed in a flash of silver moonlight. Vincent circled the flesh of his left ring finger with the blade, carved a deep crimson groove. He held his hand up to her, spread his fingers. Blood trickled between his knuckles, down his wrist, dribbled and spattered against the black and white checkered tile. A new scar, far deeper than the rest.  “This is the _last_ time I leave you. I promise. And I will be back as fast as I can. With help.”

 

He bent to tie the laces of his boots, his left fingertips slippery with his blood. “The only people who have keys to the interior doors of the house are me and Gast. Lucy I… I'm _sorry_.” Vincent straightened, forced himself through the door, shut and locked it behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent ran quietly, pivot around corners, weaved through the hallways, spilled out into the main foyer. He had one arm through his knee length wool coat when the front doors swung inward and spat Gast into the manor. His face was bright red, windburned. His hair was frozen in chunks, ice in his mustache. Vincent nearly tackled him with excitement, relief and desperation. For a moment, he thought of his dad. “Gast! Gast, Gast!!”

 

Vincent shook the scientist by the arms. “Lucrecia— she’s sick— she’s bleeding badly— and she’s in labor-—the power went out— and the truck won’t start— you have to help us— we have to get out of here— you have to—” He froze, a knot of apprehension pit in his stomach. Gast’s face was dazed… disoriented.

 

“Calm down boy.” Gast’s voice was slow and although stern, rang detached and hollow.  “The reactor has been shut down. That means an alarm was tripped back at headquarters. The ShinRa will come.” Gast pulled off his gloves and hat, threw them carelessly to the floor. “…Give me one of your guns.”

 

“Shut down…? Why?” Vincent’s brows knit. “That’s why the power—”

Gast seemed to stare past him. “It is far worse than you could ever know. A gun, boy.”

 

Vincent pulled the gun from his belt and hand it grip first to the scientist. “Where are your glasses? Can you see?”

 

“Nevermind that. I’ve got a flashlight and can see enough. Hand it here.”

 

Vincent hesitate a moment before he let go of the pistol. “You stay with her. I have to figure out a way to get us out of here before—”

 

“Where… is she?”

 

“She’s in the bathroom in the back hallway.”

 

“And Hojo?”

 

“Hasn’t come up. If his behavior pattern holds, we won’t have to worry about him until the morning. Gast please. Keep her safe.”

 

Vincent grabbed his scarf from the coat tree near the door, wound it around his lower face. Once he had worked on his gloves, he sprint out the door and down the mansion's exterior steps, three at a time.

 

He was running full tilt, a spray of white in his wake, until his legs suddenly turned to lead. He stopped so hard he almost fell straight onto his face. It wasn’t a thought that caught him, but a feeling. A yawning dread.

 

“ _It is far worse than you could ever know.”_

 

Vincent’s heart dropped. For a moment, he thought maybe it had stopped completely. Gast had not expressed any form of curiosity over his attempts to flee unnoticed, nor the lack of Hojo’s awareness of the situation. Vincent felt as if he had kept moving, but his body was abandoned, stuck in the snow. He exhaled a bloom of panic. “…No.”

 

“ _Where… is she?”_

 

“ _No!!_ ” He twisted around, sprint back toward the mansion, pumped his legs as hard as he could. When he felt his muscles would tear apart, he ran faster, skid and slipped against the ice and snow.

 

Gast had unlocked the bathroom door, left it open. He didn’t even seem to hear Vincent move in behind them. The scientists loomed over his unconscious prodigy, the muzzle of Vincent’s gun pushed against the ball of her abdomen. He held the gun with both hands, fingers on the trigger. Gast murmured to himself, eyes tightly closed, as if in prayer. The moonlight revealed tears that wove through the lines of his face, disappeared into his mustache.

 

An attempt to disarm him was too risky— any chance of startling him risked a reflexive squeeze. That pistol was Vincent’s main and preferred weapon, a custom build, modified with a hair trigger. It would take nothing but a startled twitch. Vincent spoke instead, eerily calm. “Step back.”

 

Gast ignored him, but his arms begun to shake.

 

“Lower the gun. Take two big steps back. Up against the wall.” Vincent took a smooth, slow stride forward. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you and I both know that I can.”

 

Gast opened his eyes, allowed more tears to fall. “Stay out of it, boy. It’s all over.”

 

“I respect and admire you, Professor. I always have. But if you don’t step back by the count of three I will break every single bone in your body.” The hair on the back of Vincent’s neck and arms stood up, the skin on his forearms erupt in horripilation, a titillating bloodlust, a siren call into the darkness. Submit, indulge, succumb, let go. Vincent blinked it away, forced himself to focus.

 

“This doesn’t concern you!” Gast finally looked to him, his face full of fear and anger and sorrow.

 

“No. It _does_. That baby is mine, not Hojo’s. And right now you have _my_ gun up against _my_ family. One.”

 

“It’s not a human, Vincent. It’s not a child!”

“Two.”

 

“You have no idea what we’ve done!”

 

“Three.”

 

Vincent took a harsh, violent step forward. Gast swung the gun up to meet the line of the Turk’s chest— exactly as Vincent had intended. He raised both of his hands slowly, palms out. “Better. Now give me my gun. Then we can talk about this.”

 

Gast shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut again. “Sephiroth cannot come to be. It is an abomination! Jenova… Jenova is not…”

 

Vincent narrowed his eyes. “I’ve seen him. We’ve all seen him. Ultrasounds and… he's a normal, healthy baby. What about Jenova?”

 

Gast moved suddenly, flipped the gun upward and pushed the muzzle into the flesh beneath his chin. “Gods forgive me. Gaia forgive me.”

 

What seemed like an eternity passed between them, a matter of seconds distorted and bent into timelessness. The scientist’s shoulders slumped. He pushed the gun into Vincent’s hands as if it had become too hot to hold. Vincent ripped it away from him, bit back the almost insatiable urge to pistol whip him.

 

“I’m so sorry.” Gast shoved past Vincent, broke into a run when he crossed into the hallway.

 

Vincent shoved the pistol back into his belt, dropped to his knees next to the tub. Lucrecia’s head had lolled to the side, her body sprawled like a ragdoll. “Lucy,” he shook her, pat her cheek firmly. She did not respond. Vincent pulled off his right glove with his teeth, lay his index finger beneath her nose. Her breathing was slow and slight, but present.

 

“Lucy, I shouldn’t have left you. I’m so sorry. We’re staying together now, and we can’t stay here.” He worked her out of the tub and back into his arms, lift her once again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

The wind tore at Vincent’s hair, slapped it against his cheeks and eyes. He had secured another blanket around Lucrecia, an old woolen thing, covered her face. Attempting to make it into Nibelheim on foot was a dangerous choice— but there was not another. It had proven to be more difficult to carry her unconscious, dead fragile weight. Her body would tense and tremble with contractions, and he struggled to keep her steady. His fear was in his chest, clawed at his throat. He had never even touched a baby, let alone delivered one. The medical training he had was basic wound care, field stitches, splints. Even if he, by some miracle, was able to deliver Sephiroth safely it would be mere minutes until the cold took him.

 

The walk into town would have taken ten minutes in clear weather, an easy winding pathway. But the snow was halfway up his shins, and bit his face in sharp, stinging pelts. Although the wind was at his back, each step was getting harder. He could no longer feel his feet or his hands.

 

For a moment, he allowed himself to regret not involving Hojo. But Lucrecia had made him promise not to hurt her husband, and even though he had done so simply to calm her, he had promised all the same. There was no outcome in that scenario that didn’t involve Hojo’s death— nor would it be a simple one. Vincent would tear him apart, a ritual of pain and destruction.

 

Perhaps it was this thought, of the hot, metallic taste of blood, the thrill of dismemberment, the nearly perverse pleasure of dominance that fueled him forward, pushed away the distractions of love and fear.

 

 

 

_Grimoire was halted with a palm to his chest by one of the guards who kept the gathering crowd at bay. “Please, you have to let me through!” Grimoire craned his neck, rose to his toes to scan over the tops of heads and tightly packed shoulders._

 

_People whispered in nervous excitement to each other, some simply gawked, stunned into speechlessness._

 

“ _Sir, get back!”_

 

“ _That’s my son!_ — _You have to let me_ — _”_

 

“ _I won’t tell you again_ — _h-hey!”_

 

_Grimoire shoved past the line of guards, broke into a jog. “Vincent!!”_

 

_The police chief gave Grimoire a quick visual inspection as he approached, confident by his appearance alone he had reason to be there. “You dad?”_

 

“ _Yes. I am his father,” Grimoire slid around the side the officer and crouched down in front of Vincent, who was seated on the pavement. His hands had been cuffed behind his back, linked to a set of ankle restraints. His shirt, which had once been white, was a saturated, sticky scarlet. The blood extend down his legs and arms, clots in his hair. Grimoire grabbed his son’s cheeks in both hands, lift his face to his own. “What did you do…?!”_

 

_Vincent shook his head frantically._

 

 _Grimoire stood, gave a small bow to the officer. “Look, I_ — _”_

 

“ _This boy is insane. He’s nuts. It’s like he’s possessed. I had to tase him three times to get him down!”_

 

“ _You did what?! No! I mean, well yes— he isn’t like other kids— but he needs help— please—”_

 

“ _It’s a little bit late for that, wouldn’t you say?” The officer gestured to the scene behind them. Grimoire couldn’t bring himself to look with anything but a token glance._

 

“ _You can’t imprison him. You can’t throw him in there. He’s just a kid! They’ll eat him alive!”_

 

_The officer shrugged. “I’d be more worried about them, to tell you the truth. I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve seen a lot of shit. Your son is a monster.”_

 

_The lines in Grimoire's face deepened. “He’s not— he’s a loving boy with a huge, fragile heart… but he’s mixed up and… please…”_

 

_The officer shrugged again. “It’s not my problem. You lucked out. The ShinRa want him.”_

 

 

 

Vincent allowed himself to collapse backwards against the clinic door. He had intended to lean there just long enough to catch his breath, but the cold stung his lungs and focused adrenaline urged him to push on. He lift his foot, slammed his heel in rapid succession against the lower panels of the door. His kicks continued, increased in force until the door swung open behind him.

 

“Stop, stop!! You’re going to break it!” A young woman peeked out at him from behind the edge of the door, wide eyed. Vincent charged in without invitation, dropped to his knees and lay Lucrecia against his lap. He used his teeth to pull off his gloves, the left one caught against the frozen blood between his fingers.

 

“…You’re the ShinRa… from the mansion.“ The woman shut the door, closed out the whipping gusts of wind and snow. There were a few lights on in the clinic, and the steady hum of a generator.

 

“Lucy…” Vincent worked the blankets open around her face and chest, though his movements were clumsy and awkward from the numbness in his hands. Her skin had almost entirely lost it’s color, now a waxy gray pallor, her lips a tint of blue. He tried to feel for her breathing beneath her nose, but he couldn’t feel anything at all. He pushed his ear against her bare chest, but could only hear the pound of his own heart.

 

The woman crept to the base of the stairs, grabbed the banister in both hands and shouted up. “Grandpa!!”

 

“Lucy, I need you to be okay. We’re supposed to stay together, right?” Vincent did the best he could to make a tight fist, pushed his knuckles firmly against her sternum and twist. She did not respond. “C’mon Lu…!” He dug his knuckles in harder, briskly raked them up and down between her breasts. “Lucrecia!!” He pulled her up and against him, cradled her head and chest. “I’m so sorry, I—” Vincent lost his words into the swell of his throat. The inside of the blankets had gone dark red.

 

His head snapped up when he heard footsteps approach from the side, and faster than a thought he had drawn his gun from beneath his coat and aimed it between the eyes of the old man who stood over them.

The Doctor raised both of his hands, took a shocked step backward. His face softened as he looked at Vincent’s, his wild, wet eyes, his clenched teeth and the tears caught in his lower lashes. It was terror and loss and anger, a trauma, a story that didn’t need to be told. “You’re in a safe place. You _know_ that. You came here. Let us help.”

 

Vincent blinked, though it took a moment for the man’s words to settle over him. He nodded rigidly when they did.

 

“Get her up. Help me get her in back.” The Doctor hurried ahead, pushed open a door and held it. Vincent pulled Lucrecia up, followed the Doctor through and into a small room. The young woman trailed them both, gathering supplies as she went. Vincent worked Lucrecia’s body out of the wet and bloody blankets, set her on the bed.

 

The Doctor pushed in between them, a flurry of movements. The woman brought fresh blankets and linens, passed items to the Doctor when he requested them. Vincent tried desperately to collect himself, to provide a status report, do his duty. “She slept for two days straight… she got sick… she was out of it and vomiting and…” Vincent took a small step back. “And then… she was up, for a while… she started bleeding…”

 

“Your wife is in rough shape,” the Doctor didn’t pause to address Vincent, continued his exam, fast and steady movements. “But your baby sounds great, all things considered. I’m shocked.”

 

“ _Mine_? W-why would you say that?” Vincent baulked.

 

The Doctor threw Vincent a brief look over his shoulder. “Well, it is yours, isn’t it? You two were always in town here being all smitten with each other all last year and through the spring. Valentine, right? The Turk? She loved you so. I confirmed Lucy’s pregnancy myself right around then. She was worried you'd be angry with her. So worried about your feelings. Well, I assumed the "you" she talked about was you, and that you're the father.”

 

Vincent’s brows furrowed. It was the first time he had answered that question, or even had the time or space to realize what it meant. It hit in that moment, a tsunami or fear and sadness, of fragile hope. The first time any of this had felt real. He watched in silence for a long time, watched the Doctor work, watched the motionless form of the only thing he loved that seemed so suddenly small beneath frantic hands and medical tools. He blinked, a few unfallen tears glossed his dark eyes. “…Yeah. I am. I’m… his dad.”

 

“His, huh? Think you’re right. I’ve delivered a lot of babies and this one is probably a boy. You’re lucky you got here when you did. She’s already into the second stage of labor. You said she was out for two days… her labor probably started long before you realized. The vomiting was most likely her body’s reaction to the pain when she came to for a while. Her body is doing what it needs to do. Once we get this baby out, it should be easier to get them both stabilized.” The Doctor shook his head, his tone now scolding. “You probably wouldn’t be in this situation if you had brought her in here for proper prenatal care. Some job you ShinRa did. She's clearly dehydrated, malnourished… do you have any idea how dangerous and foolish this was?”

 

Vincent’s lips part wordlessly, but his response dissolved in his mouth. _It was my place._

 

“Senia, take papa here into the other room. His frostbite needs to be addressed.” The Doctor gestured to the young woman.

 

Vincent grabbed the rail of the bed, jolt as if someone had hit him in the groin. “No!!”

 

The Doctor narrowed his eyes at him. “If you want to ensure the outcome of this is as favorable as it can be, you won’t risk getting in my way.”

 

Senia took Vincent’s arm, gave him a gentle tug. It hurt him to leave, to take each step, to move through the hallway, to sit. “Don’t worry,” Senia smiled warmly, a gentle kind face. “My grandfather has been a Doctor for as long as anyone can remember. He’ll make sure they’re okay.”

Vincent stared blankly at her, allowed himself to retreat into the flickers of his own darkness. “And we have to get you fixed up, too. You want to hold your baby, right?” She pushed back the sleeves of his thermal, the left side crusted with cold congealed blood.

 

He continued to stare ahead, lost somewhere. The woman grabbed his left hand and eyed the deep cut between his first and second knuckle on his ring finger, raised it to for a visual examination. Her smile faded into a look of quiet concern, of empathy. “…What happened up there in that old house?”

 

And when she hugged him, Vincent dropped his head, his shoulders heaving as he sobbed into his hands.

 

 


	19. Perfect

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening - [ A Minute to Breathe - Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwwQ4uVGGSE)

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

_Perfect_

 

 

 

Grandpa said that the baby’s heart rate still sounds reassuring. But…” Senia looked up at Vincent’s face, his complexion blotched from crying. He had since stopped, now sat slumped in a detached fatigue. “Although she is pretty far into her labor, she is unconscious, which means she isn’t able to help push. Her contractions alone won’t be enough. If the baby’s heart rate drops… have you heard of a cesarian section? Grandpa would have to do that. And it can get a little intense, so if that happens… you have to stay out. I mean it.” She smiled warmly, an attempt at reassurance against the weight of her words.

 

“It’s not too tight, is it?” Senia smoothed down the final piece of tape over the gauze she had wound around Vincent’s hand. He flexed his fingers in the resistance of the bandage. His thumb, middle and index finger had been left free, the other two and his palm wrapped for stability. Vincent shook his head, relaxed his hand, made a fist.

 

“Good. Make sure to keep it clean and dry. And next time—”

 

Lucrecia’s gasp knifed into the base of his spine, radiated outward and up, a supernova. Senia made a grab for him as he pushed off against his knees, a flash of black from the chair and across the room. “—Wait!”

 

Vincent tore down the short hallway, nearly slammed to a stop against the doorframe of the other room. Lucrecia had jolted up in the bed, confused and terrified. The Doctor ’s response was firm but calm. “Lucrecia, it’s me. Doctor Areeda. Don’t panic. You’re safe. Baby is coming.”

 

“Vincent!?” Lucrecia’s cry morphed into a wail of intolerable pain. She almost didn’t notice when Vincent pushed up beside her, grabbed her hand. “I’m right here, I’m with you.” He almost smiled despite himself, an eruption of relief. Not only was she alive, she was well enough to move, and lucid or not; it had been his name she had formed before anything else.

 

Senia joined her grandfather at the foot of the bed, a whirl of motion. They were speaking to each other in quick, quiet voices. Vincent could not hear what they said over Lucrecia’s gasping anguish. He watched their faces instead, somber, focused expressions. The Doctor raised his voice to overpower hers. “You need to relax, stop bearing down! Work with your body, not against it!”

 

Lucrecia shook her head furiously, pushed a scream through clenched teeth. Vincent wrapped an arm around her shoulders, ran the back of his free hand up and down her arm. She pushed her face into the side of his chest, attempted a steady inhale.

 

“Good! When the next one starts, you push through it. Ready?” The Doctor pulled a stool up from behind him with the toe of his shoe and sat. Senia grabbed a small blanket and stood next to him, waiting. Vincent watched them with the distinct feeling of drowning, a helpless, hopeless decent, a creeping, crushing sense of dread.

 

“ _It’s not a human, Vincent! It’s not a child!”_

 

“Good, Lucy! Deep breath. Again!”

 

“ _Sephiroth cannot come to be!”_

 

“Posterior position. Almost there!”

 

“ _It’s an abomination!”_

 

“One more big, big push Lucrecia, one more!”

 

“ _Jenova is not…”_

 

“…There he is! It’s a boy!”

 

Lucrecia collapsed against Vincent, slick with sweat and tears. But there was no noise of celebration, no rounds of congratulations, just an eerie, tense silence. Although he had seen Sephiroth’s image in ultrasound, a black and white grainy promise, Vincent was terrified to look at the thing in the Doctor ’s hands. The product of a tragic, painful love, of unbridled ambition and the chaos of good intentions distorted into something unimaginable, some nameless formless thing that once revealed could never be put away.

 

Vincent looked.

 

And it was not horror that took him, but love, something beyond love, unidentifiable in its certainty. For the little black haired boy, for his tiny ears and fingers, for his feet and nose and everything, everything so undeniably and perfectly _human_.

 

The quiet wasn’t a response to the shock of a monster, a deformed, terrible thing. The quiet was from and for Sephiroth himself, who Vincent realized, was not moving. He had come out wet and red, but his color faded to a bluish tint as Senia suctioned his mouth and nose, rubbed at his chest.

 

Lucrecia was struggling to sit, pinned by the weight of her own exhaustion. Vincent did his best to comfort her, though he kept his eyes on their son’s tiny slack form. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, a distortion of time, or perception, and the sudden overwhelming presence of both. The Doctor and his granddaughter turned away, a wall of backs and silence.

 

Lucrecia’s voice was as small and fragile as the new life just removed from her. “Vincent?”

 

Vincent forced himself to look away from the Doctor 's hunched form in the corner, to look at Lucrecia in her fading consciousness. Her eyes were closed, her fingers ever looser around his. He helped ease her down, stroked her dampness of her hair. She looked like a cadaver, waxy and cool, though somehow even more beautiful, ethereal and suddenly _other_. “He’s…” Vincent forced against the haunting quiet.

 

_He's not breathing. He's all blue, all still. He's so small, Lucy._

 

_He can't breathe._

 

_He can't breathe._

 

_He can't..._

 

Sephiroth’s squall cut from the corner, loud and clear and stirring. For a moment, Vincent couldn’t feel his body, Lucrecia’s hand in his, or the breath he exhaled he didn’t even realize he was holding. He felt himself smile, overtaken by the melting of euphoric relief. Nothing else mattered. “He… he’s here. He’s beautiful and… And he’s… _perfect_.”

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

They had tried to usher Vincent out of the room while they cleaned up both Lucrecia and the baby, finished the birth, but he refused to leave. He instead sat in a chair at the head of the bed, watching, thinking. He had allowed himself a moment of indulgence, of complete presence, one he feared had been too much. Time to strategize had been lost, and worse, fogged him with feeling. Vincent struggled to separate himself, to focus on cold tactics, reason, their next move. He couldn’t.

 

_Gast was wrong. He’s no monster. And maybe Lucrecia and Hojo were wrong, too. Maybe he’s not even a Cetra. Maybe he isn’t anything but a normal boy, and all of this was for for nothing. And now…_

 

Vincent tensed as the Doctor approached him, Sephiroth swaddled in his arms, and Senia at his side. “You’ve never held a baby before, have you? Hold out your arms, like this.” She grabbed Vincent’s forearms, gently maneuvered them into place. She seemed amused by his stiffness, endeared to the fear that bloomed on his face. “You won’t hurt him,” Senia reassured, took Sephiroth from her grandfather and placed him gently in the folds of Vincent’s arms. She gave a small smile and excused herself, slipped out of the room.

 

The baby had regained his color, a healthy pink. Vincent was astounded by how much of a person he was, fully formed but tiny, a face that resembled his own, even more strikingly similar beneath a mess of downy black hair. He was warm, radiated his own body heat, dense in his swaddling. A grounding in the surreal, he was not only present but so completely real. Alive.

 

Vincent looked to Lucrecia, who seemed less so. The Doctor had mentioned more than once how surprised he was at Sephiroth’s size and health, how he had flourished at her expense. Vincent felt a stab of remorse for calling her selfish. His brows knit when he looked back to his son, then up to the Doctor . “What… do I do with him?”

 

“You’ll be asking yourself that question until he’s the age you are now. Get used to it.” The Doctor shook his head in response to the unchanging look of shocked bewilderment on Vincent’s face, offered a reassuring chuckle. “Talk to him.”

 

“I’m… not good at talking.”

 

“It doesn't matter. He’ll just love hearing your voice. He heard you talking to his mother for a very long time. He knows who you are.”

 

Vincent looked down into his son’s small, sleepy face, the heaviness in his head and heart crushing. “…I don’t want him to.”

The Doctor pulled over a chair, seated himself, leaned in on elbows and knees. “What I meant is that he knows you’re his father. That little thing doesn’t know, or care, about much else. You and his mother are his whole world. Right now she has a lot of recovering to do. That leaves you. ”

 

Vincent’s expression was not one of a man who had been successfully comforted by gentle wisdom. It seemed to scare him even more. The Doctor cupped his hand over Vincent’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze, a longing echo of Grimoire. “You hauled a naked woman wrapped in blankets down a mountain, on foot, in the dark, in a blizzard, damn near broke down my door and waved a gun in my face. You showed absolutely no concern for your own well being and cried for over an hour when I made you sit in the other room like a little kid with a skinned knee. You don’t need to be good at talking. That says plenty.”

 

One of Sephiroth’s hands had worked itself from the folds of his blanket. Vincent made a timid move to tuck it back in, but Sephiroth grabbed him, his tiny fingers curled around Vincent’s thumb. The baby’s strength surprised him, and he held back, wrapped his fingers gently around Sephiroth’s forearm.

 

“I won't claim to know you, or your history, or your business with the ShinRa. But I do know people. I've seen hundreds of people come into this world and leave it. People on the best days of their lives and on their worst. And I will say this— whoever you were yesterday is not who you you have to be today. Whatever you’ve done… there is always room for redemption. It's your choice.”

 

“I…”Vincent’s words stuck in his mouth, dry and sharp. He drew a deep breath, held it. “We’re in a lot of danger. Lucy… and Sephiroth… and me.” Vincent eyed the Doctor with a sad hurt— he needed him, needed someone to trust, an ally. But Gast’s betrayal had cut him too deeply. There would be no trust. Not anymore. “We need to get out of Nibelheim, as soon as possible. We are in… a great deal of trouble with the ShinRa.”

 

The Doctor sat up straight, bristled. “You cannot take her anywhere. I’ve just got her stabilized! It’s far too dangerous. And he needs to eat every few hours. You can barely hold him, I’m less confident in your ability to ensure he is fed! I'd like to see you try and change a diaper! It can’t happen. Not now.”

 

Vincent kept his eyes on his thumb in the coil of Sephiroth’s fist. “What you said… about…” He looked up at the Doctor , a rawness in his face. “I’m _not_ who I was.”

 

The Doctor held Vincent’s eyes in his own, gave a small nod. “What have you done to earn such ire?”

 

“I have something that they think is theirs.” His arms instinctively tensed around Sephiroth, pulled him in closer. “And they aren’t getting it back.”

 

Senia knocked gently at the door even though it was halfway open, a polite attempt to not interrupt. Vincent flashed to standing, shift Sephiroth to his left arm and made a lunge for his gun.

 

The Doctor caught Vincent’s hand under his own. “Easy! You’re going to hurt somebody you don’t mean to! That's an infant you're holding, not a football!”

 

The words hit Vincent in some wretched place. He slunk backward, dropped his chin to his chest. He sat slowly, repositioned the baby with a remorseful caution. “You’ve obviously been through a lot. Your adrenaline is crashing and your nerves are shot. You have to rest.”

 

“No. Absolutely not. I can’t I…”

 

The Doctor stood. “If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for her. I won’t separate the three of you. Here. Take off your shirt and lay next to her.”

 

“My… shirt?” Vincent blinked, hesitantly handed Sephiroth off to Senia when she made a reach for him, took him with a disapproving look.

 

“Yes, your shirt. I get flack from time to time about being too touchy-feely, but as I’ve said, I’ve been a physician for many, many years. Your son is doing well now, but without his mother… well. I’ve seen the best fed but emotionally neglected babies waste away, and I’ve seen scraggly little things flourish on nothing but love.”

 

Vincent squirmed out of his shirt, pushed back a tangle of black from his eyes. He sat on the edge of the bed, swung his legs up. He worked one arm beneath Lucrecia, pulled her into the crook of his arm, mindful of her IV lines. Senia unwrapped Sephiroth, laid him across Vincent’s bare chest between them. The baby seemed comforted by Vincent’s heartbeat, nuzzled the side of his face against his father’s skin.

 

“Just for an hour or so. You all need it.” The Doctor pulled up the blankets.

 

Vincent let his guilt blister. “The longer we stay the more you personally risk.”

 

The Doctor glanced to his watch, shook his head. “It is three in the morning. I’m not letting you endanger that baby tearing off into a blizzard. He’ll freeze! What exactly are you suggesting?”

 

Vincent was too tired to think, to move. He stared at nothing as the Doctor left the room, shut the door gently. His exhaustion ached, hurt him in his bones. He glanced to Lucrecia’s face, to her fluffy still lashes, to her full parted lips. He set his hand atop Sephiroth’s back, lost to the rhythm of his steady, peaceful breaths.

 

_Talk to him._

 

“I’m… _sorry_.” Vincent felt stupid, speaking to an audience that wasn't really listening, vulnerable and self conscious. “…I… I’m. Uh.” He wound a soft black coil of Sephiroth’s hair around the tip of his finger, still in awe of it’s reality. “I’m… not… I'm not good at… and… I haven't been a very good person, either. But… I… I'm your dad now, so…I—"

 

"I… I’m going to teach you to play the piano. You’ve got the fingers for it. Long. Just like mine. And… I’ll teach you all the names of the constellations, the planets, their moons… about meteors and stuff. I forgot some of the constellations, but… we’ve got a bit of time for me to remember them, huh? I'm not very smart… so I've got to impress you while I can. Pretty soon you'll be teaching me things. I bet I'll always be able to out run you, though. …That’s, uh, not very impressive, is it?”

 

The more he spoke, the better he felt, an unwinding of sorrow. “I’m going to have to teach you how to fight, too. But only to defend yourself. You never, ever, hurt anyone unless you absolutely have to, okay? I want you to be like your mother, not like… me. Which, on the subject— sorry buddy, but you won’t ever even think about touching a gun.”

 

He looked to Lucrecia, a flood of feelings. “It’s not going to be an easy life. But… it’s ours. You can freelance, like my dad did. Or maybe you can be a teacher— you can teach little girls math and science. We’re going to have to move a lot. But it… won’t matter. Nothing worth having is easy, right? Isn’t that what you said to me?” He kissed her forehead, held her tighter. “It won’t matter, because we’ll be together. It always bothered you how I didn't say that I loved you. I do. I always have. And I'm sorry. I'm going to tell you so much you'll tape my mouth shut. I love you. Both of you.”

 

For a moment, he wondered if there was any way he could ever believe the things he was saying. If they could ever be real. They would be pursued relentlessly. They could trust no one, never let their guard down. Any mistake, no matter how small, could cost them their lives, shatter their family.

 

But he knew that even if he didn’t believe it was possible, he would fight every day for the rest of their lives for it. For quiet moments of normalcy, for peaceful shards of happiness. And he wondered if this is how his own father had felt for him, a desperate yearning for the sort of life the rest of the world took for granted.

 

He would keep them from hurt, from fear, from hopelessness. He would sleep with one eye open for the rest of his life, live each coming moment in a state of hyper awareness. There was no resentment in this realization, but a strange comfort. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he belonged. It was not anxiety or panic that spread through him, but a love and contentment so overwhelming it made him dizzy.

 

 


	20. Afraid

CHAPTER TWENTY

_Afraid_

 

 

 

_Vincent did not look up to see who it was that approached him. He did not care._

 

_The footfalls grew louder against the pavement until they stopped, the shoes that made them entering into Vincent’s view, pristine exotic dark leather below the hems of black tailored wool._

 

“… _Hello, Vincent.”_

 

_The speaker’s voice was male, gentle and quiet. The greeting was not returned._

 

“ _Do you know who I am?”_

 

“… _President ShinRa.”_

 

“ _You haven’t even looked at me.”_

 

_Vincent shift slightly, the chain connecting his handcuffs to the ankle restraints sang metallic, but he still did not lift his head. “I don’t need to.”_

 

“ _Oh?”_

 

“ _The helicopter you arrived in has the ShinRa logo near the back. I heard at least a dozen other sets of footsteps, so there are thirteen of you. They stopped about twenty steps behind you, all at the same time, which means they were following an order and are a unit of some sort. Only someone who thinks they are important would be transport by helicopter, or travel with an entourage. My dad works for ShinRa, so I know you pay your employees like garbage, and none of them would be stupid enough to waste a year’s salary on shoes like yours.”_

 

_President ShinRa chuckled. “Clever boy. And all your files note you as slow.” He crouched down in front of Vincent, rest his elbows on his knees and steepled his hands. “But you aren’t slow at all, are you? You just don’t care to apply yourself. You have to be…. motivated. I hear you look exactly like your father. Show me your face.”_

 

_Vincent raised his chin, met the President’s pale blue eyes. And when Vincent called up a mouthful of phlegm and spit, he launched it directly into the President’s face. A dozen rifles cocked, a light show of laser sights dancing against the black of Vincent’s messy hair. Grimoire's cry of protest cut above the gasps of the crowd. ShinRa removed a pocket square of silk, dabbed at the mucus on his cheek. When he spoke, his voice was unfazed._

 

“ _You are a very, very bold young man. And you are in a great deal of trouble. Aren’t you afraid?”_

 

_Vincent leaned in, exhaled his secret. “…No.”_

 

_ShinRa raised his hand, and when he lowered it, the sights of the rifles lowered too. “Do you know what we do at the ShinRa Corporation, Vincent?”_

 

“ _You make weapons.”_

 

“… _That’s right.” President ShinRa tilt his head slightly to the side, admiring the strange bloody boy before him. A grin unfurled across his face, ripe and rotten. “We make weapons.”_

 

 

 

 

Vincent’s eyes snapped open, to the sound of a helicopter, some remnants of a dream. The room was bright and harsh, a horrible realization of daylight. Sephiroth was sleeping deeply, still nuzzled against the nape of his chest. Vincent forced himself up, tore himself from the warmth, positioned the baby on his back and slid him up against his mother. Vincent grabbed Lucrcia’s arm, tucked it around their son. He hated himself for falling asleep, for letting time and opportunity slip by. He rummaged for his shirt, tugged it over his head and froze.

A door opened. Footsteps. Several.

 

He shook his head vigorously, worked his arms into his sleeves. Sleep still clung to him, painful and heavy, and he rubbed his face briskly to force it away.

 

The Doctor ’s voice was muffled from the front of the clinic. “I have to insist. You must not disturb her! She’s just been through a traumatic delivery, and her condition is poor. She needs to rest!”

 

Vincent grabbed his gun, fought against the wave of nausea that almost brought him to his knees.

 

Hojo’s distinct voice punctuated the group of footfalls that drew closer. “She is my wife!” The surprised confusion in the Doctor ’s response was palpable, even through the door. “Your _wife_?!”

 

Vincent physically cringed, scraped his fingers along his scalp, tugged at his hair, paced in short strides.

 

His decision was quick, beautiful in it’s simplicity and familiarity. They’d have to die. All of them. Hojo, and whoever was with him. He had promised Lucrecia he wouldn’t hurt her husband, but this was not a space for sentimentality. She could hate him for the rest of their lives, as long as she was safe to do so. The choice made him giddy, his excitement for their destruction manifesting in a rush of relief. His body’s involuntary prayer to the only god he worshiped, the three headed cerberus, love and sex and death. A smile erected the corners of his lips. _Kill them all._

 

“Where were you?! You are damn lucky your security brought her here, or she and that baby would have died! Are you the one who was supposed to be providing medical care? What were you thinking?!” The door to the room shook with an impact, a sound to suggest the Doctor had pushed himself up against it in an attempt to block passage… and as an alert. Vincent passed him a silent thought of gratitude, drew his gun and aimed it at the door. _Blood and flesh and pain and…_

 

A tiny noise caught Vincent’s attention, snapped his face to the other side of the room. Sephiroth was awake, squirming. There was instantly nothing appealing in slaughter, no visceral hunger. Vincent looked back down the barrel of his gun, steadied his aim, tried to call back the bloodlust. The pistol didn’t have it’s silencer equipped. He grit his teeth, annoyed and frustrated that his focus kept gravitating back to the fear of damaging the baby's hearing, of scaring him. Death was his mother tongue, the siren call of home. And somehow he felt as if he had forgotten how to speak it. Sephiroth’s hearing and contentment seemed petty and inconsequential up against the circumstances, but the distraction was relentless.

“Don’t you lecture me! You have no concept of what you are saying!” Hojo’s anger reverberated in his piercing voice.

 

And then another voice, female, and one Vincent had never heard. “Move. Now. Or we make you move.”

 

Vincent closed one eye, pushed off the safety, pulled back the hammer of his gun and held his breath. _Kill them all._

 

When the door opened, Hojo rushed to Lucrecia. He didn’t even seem to notice the Turk, seated motionless in a chair near the head of the bed.

 

Vincent watched Hojo silently, watched his expression fall as he examined Lucrecia, shifted and smoothed her blankets. The disappointment and shame on his face dissolved under rage as he spun toward Vincent, still seated. He seemed to avoid looking at Sephiroth. “You…!" Hojo marched to him, shoved a finger into his face. “How dare you! How dare you not alert me?! How dare you remove her from the mansion without so much as… how could you act so selfishly and recklessly!”

 

“It is my duty to ensure the physical well being of the ShinRa personnel on this project. Lucrecia was in need of immediate medical assistance. Gast was not present. Neither, Hojo, were you.” Vincent utilized his exhaustion, channeled it into a tone of boredom.

 

Hojo narrowed his eyes behind his glasses, summoned Vincent to stand with a slight wiggle of his two fingers. Vincent stood obediently, as instructed. Hojo swung the back of his hand with such force across the side of Vincent’s face the wedding ring split the edge of the Turk's lower lip.

 

Vincent did not allow himself a reaction. He stood stoically, expressionless. Hojo turned away from him in a silent fury, moved to his wife. He touched her hair with trepidation, a gentle gloom. He frowned when his attention finally shift to Sephiroth, to the squirmy thing that had begun to cry out, hungry and agitated. Hojo picked up the baby, ran his fingertips along Sephiroth’s hairline, seemed transfixed by the coils of his dark hair.

 

Vincent’s heart had migrated to his throat as he watched Hojo lift his son. His reflexes called him to shatter the scientist’s hand with the butt of his gun, but he kept himself imprisoned in the strategy of stillness.

 

“Valentine…” Hojo’s voice was shaped by a sadness, a thoughtful melancholy. He looked from the baby to Vincent, paused. “Were you… here? With her? …When… “

 

“…Yes. I was.”

 

Hojo turned away from him, hid his face. “… Get out.”

 

Vincent inhaled through his nose, a long, slow draw. Anything he could do in the moment was too risky— he had heard the others enter with Hojo, but knew nothing about them or why they were there. Assumptions were a gamble he’d of taken on himself, but it was not himself he cared about. He took a step forward, then another, forced himself into the hallway, something snapping in him with each step. The knowledge he was only on the other side of the door from them was his only comfort. The hallway was brighter than the room, illuminated by overhead lights and the late morning sunshine. He eyed the people who crowded the hall, a sea of navy blue and black ties, the official Turk uniform.

 

Vincent surveyed the other Turks, none of whom he had ever seen before, or even knew existed. He kept his surprise at their presence hidden, his features cold and flat despite the weariness on his face, the hollow of his eyes and the gauntness of his cheeks. He and Veld had been the only two superiors when he had first been sent to the Jenova Project with a smattering of underlings. He had not been informed of the department’s apparent expansion. Once, he would have been annoyed and offended by the slight, but in the halo of fluorescent light, he did not care.

 

He was not who he was yesterday.

 

A small voice came from his side, belonged to someone he hadn’t yet noticed. “It’s you! It’s really you!”

 

Vincent tilt his chin downward, narrowed his eyes at the speaker. It was a boy no older than thirteen, his thick black hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail. The boy’s eyes widened, his head tilt almost all the way back in awe. “Vincent Valentine!”

 

“…Are we babysitting now?” Vincent looked up to the others, pushed back a fall of wavy black from the right side of his face.

 

“You’re really him!” The boy gave an enthusiastic little bounce. “You're the one Veld calls the Berserker! We heard you’re insane — you used to blackout and wreck everything! Then you joined ShinRa and now you aren't afraid of anything and can't feel pain!”

 

One of the female Turks smacked the boy across the ear. “Tseng!”

 

Tseng cupped his ear with his hand. “And we heard that they did all kinds of stuff to you until all your feelings shut off. Veld was able to snipe you for the Turks, and now you're a precision killing machine!”

 

The woman swiped to smack him again, but the boy easily dodged her hand. “You’re embarrassing us! Veld just said that stuff to mess with you. He's your superior, not some rockstar!” Vincent made note of her holster, and her clumsy swing. Electro rod.

 

“I said I wasn’t willing to work with a kid. This is ridiculous,” one of the men scoffed. Reinforced knuckled gloves. A Brawler.

 

“I’m not a kid, I’m a Turk.” Tseng shrugged. “Well. _Almost_.”

 

“Almost means not yet. So shut your fucking mouth and settle down.” Another man spoke, his arms folded across his broad chest. Another electro rod, and a bowie knife. “Sorry about him. That kid is some… genius tech-wizard with a crazy high IQ. He isn't normally like this. But he can hack into anything. He's Veld's shadow. This is his first time on assignment without the boss.”

 

“Someone entered a manual shutdown of the reactor. I got to come because I can override the lock codes, open doors. We went to the mansion to find you, and the old guy said he needed to find you too.” Tseng made an effort to sound more adult.

 

Vincent was doing his best to focus on the sounds from the room behind him, for any sign of distress, annoyed and frustrated by the chatter. He kept his composure, leaned casually against the doorframe. “Ah. The reactor.” He was mindful of who answered, an attempt to determine rank among them. “Is that why you’re here? Seems excessive for maintenance.”

 

The last of the men spoke. Two holsters, dual pistols. “Partly. We also—”

 

“—Is it true?” Tseng interrupt, took a few steps closer to Vincent. “Are you the Berserker? Did you really _massacre_ all those people like they said?”

 

Vincent looked down his nose to the boy, his face and tone completely flat. “Keep talking to me and find out.”

 

Hojo opened the door, joined the others in the hallway. He was holding Sephiroth, carried him over to the Doctor . “I am concerned about his lungs, as his birth was pre-term. I don’t see any evidence he was given oxygen. Has he had any difficulty breathing?”

 

The Doctor shook his head. He looked to Vincent, with his arms folded across his chest, leaning against the doorframe with his head down. The Turk did not resemble the mess of a man he had comforted the night before. And Sephiroth, the Doctor knew, had not been born early, he came right on time. The pieces began to click into place and he looked away from Vincent, from the man who was not who he was before, intentional and knowing. “He is as strong as an ox.”

 

Hojo nodded. “What is the condition of my wife?”

 

“She lost a significant amount of blood and she is severely dehydrated. Honestly, I am surprised her vitals are as stable as they are. It’s a miracle.”

 

“She needs to be returned to the mansion. We have extremely critical time sensitive business to conduct.” Hojo was clearly flustered. He was angry and hurt, unwilling to discuss his intentions or circumstance surrounded by backwater physicians who used words like ‘miracle’ and mindless, rookie Turks. How could any of them understand that the only clear assessment of their well being could be provided by him? Or why? The burden of his role, as a scientist and as husband, a father, and the almost electric contradiction in them he had never reconciled. The lines in his face deepened as he frowned. He could not decide if he was relieved or disappointed in how normal Sephiroth seemed.

 

“She cannot be moved. It is far too dangerous,” the Doctor snapped. “And again, it never would have gotten to this point if she had been properly cared for. It can wait.”

 

_You idiot. You lecture me about her condition, as if I was unaware? Do you think I neglected my wife so blatantly? Hojo thought of the papers, reams and reams of logs, detailing what she ate, what she drank. How long she slept and when. Had he recorded it all for science? Or for love, a record of his concern for her, written out in the only way he knew how? The simple, beauty of equations, the safety of controlled variables. It was her idea. All of this. What should I have done? Terminated her pregnancy when she started to deteriorate? Called off what had already begun? We are both scientists. It is the fiber of our being. And this… this is what she wanted._

 

Hojo sighed, looked to the baby in his arms. “I assure you. It cannot.” He turned to face the line of Turks, eyed them with a resentful suspicion. “I need to transport my son back to the mansion.”

 

The man with two guns stepped forward. “What you need to do is hand it over. President wants it in Midgar. Immediately.”

 

Hojo scoffed. “You were sent to investigate a power failure at the reactor and happened to be convenient in locating my wife. Go find Professor Gast. I am not ready to return to Midgar. Lucrecia is in no condition to travel. You are mad if you think I am willing to hand an infant over to the Brute Brigade to be taken anywhere without his parents.” Hojo looked past them all to Vincent, who didn’t even seem to be paying attention.

 

“Yeah, we did come for the reactor. Lucky timing! Keeps us from coming back out to this piss hole a second time. President wants his product. Official orders. We aren’t leaving without it.”

 

“He will get his _product_ when I am ready to deliver it.” Hojo had never hated Vincent more than he did in that moment. His relaxed stance; his bored, detached demeanor. The fact he was in casual clothing, instead of his Turk suit made it all worse somehow. “Right now it is imperative I get him to my facilities, or you won’t have anything to bring back to ShinRa.”

 

Vincent shift his gaze to Hojo, his head still hung. The thought of him carrying Sephiroth out into the cold, surrounded by a host of unknown Turks churned his gut. _Kill them all_. He hadn’t meant to speak, but it spilled. “…I’ll take him.”

 

“You will do no such thing, you smug bastard!” Hojo spat. But there was something to the suggestion that nagged at him. Vincent was a fixed factor, boring in his predictability. Now it was a simple question of to whom his loyalty was greater— the ShinRa, or Lucrecia. “But… you will stay here. Lucrecia…” Hojo paused, measured his words, hated them, hated everything about them, especially how deeply he knew they were true. “She will be glad for your presence when she wakes.”

 


	21. Broken and Wrong

 

 

 

_ _

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

__Broken and Wrong_ _

_She knew it was him without a moment of question. She knew with every molecule of her being that the little boy on the stage was hers._

_Sephiroth._

_He was beautiful and perfect, just like Vincent had said he was._

_He was sitting at a piano, bathed in the flood of an overhead spotlight. She had dressed him, fussed over his little suit coat, smoothed down his hair, tied his tie. She knew it, even if she did not remember. He had the quiet severity of his father, along with his striking, sharp features. But his hair was a silvery white and his eyes were so green they seemed to glow. It was a color she knew well, the subject of a lifetime of study. The unmistakable aquamarine of mako._

_He played flawlessly. It was a song she remembered from somewhere, that sad slow thing Vincent used to play. The sheet music on the old upright piano at the ShinRa mansion has called in Requiem in D Minor. Lucrecia thought her heart might burst, overcome with love and pride and an intangible happiness. Something complete._

_She rest her head on Vincent’s shoulder, who sat in the seat next to her, worked her fingers between his, squeezed his hand as they watched their son perform. But his hand was suddenly wet and cold. And when she looked, his whole arm fell away into his lap, covered in coagulated blood. She lift her eyes to his face, white and waxy and undeniably dead. A bullet had ripped through the center of his chest, left a ragged bleeding hole, an oozing pit that soiled the white of his dress shirt, turned the navy blue of his suit coat black._

_Lucrecia looked to the other people seated in the audience as they watched on unaware, watched Sephiroth’s focused face. He seemed so small in his pool of light, surrounded by so much darkness. He was completely immersed in his concentration, desperate to please his parents. She could hear his thoughts echo in her mind and heart._

_“If I do well enough -_

_if I make you famous -_

_will you love me?”_

_Sephiroth did not notice as the stage filled with people in surgical masks, a frenzy of movement, of lab coats and equipment. They grabbed the boy, tore away his clothing, replaced his recital attire with a dingy, oversized medical gown. He looked to Lucrecia, his eyes so green they scared her._

_“If I let them hurt me -_

_if I prove you were right -_

_will you love me?”_

_The crowd descended upon him, shaved away his beautiful white hair, shoved wires beneath his scalp, into his arms, the sides of his neck, the backs of his hands._

_Lucrecia spun in her seat to Vincent, grabbed the collar of his jacket and shook him. He was cold and dense and still beneath the fabric, lifeless, frozen in rigor mortis. “Vincent! Do something! They’re hurting him!” She pounded against him with balled fists. “Please! Please!!!”_

_Vincent turned only his head to her, a slow, mechanical motion. His iris' were no longer the familiar warm mahogany, but a vibrant unnatural red. She gasped, and when he spoke his voice was colder than his dead, dry lips. “I don’t care. Your science project doesn’t concern me.”_

_Hojo emerged from the faceless crowd, a scalpel in his gloved hands. Without a word, he pulled down Sephiroth’s gown and made a y-incision along his shoulders and torso. Blood seeped from the cuts, a cascade of scarlet down the boy’s porcelain skin. Sephiroth looked to Lucrecia, fearful, hurting._

_“Did I save the whole world like you said? -_

_Or just yours?”_

_Gast stepped into the light, passed Hojo a rib cutters. Lucrecia buried her face in her hands at the sound, screamed for them to stop. And suddenly, she was on the stage standing over her son, Sephiroth strapped to a gurney. She looked up, squint against the lights. The audience was clapping wildly, clapping and cheering._

_Hojo was clapping too, and Gast. “It is my honor to present to you my prodigy — no, my successor! Lucrecia Crescent! The woman responsible for the success of the Jenova Project and the advancement of science!”_

_Sephiroth was so small on the table, his organs spread out behind him like Jenova’s in the tank, his chest and abdomen hollow._

_“Stop! Stop!” She was sobbing, tried to push them all away from him. “Don’t touch my son!”_

_Sephiroth sat straight up. “You’re not my mother. You are nothing.”_

_Gast stepped forward. “A disappointment.”_

_Hojo joined him. “A whore.”_

_And Vincent too, with his missing arm and dead, red eyes. “A liar.”_

_“Please!” She made a lunge for Sephiroth, tried to wrap him in her arms, hold him to her chest. But the boy was gone, Jenova in his place, slimy and rotten with her gaping grin and one, cruel eye._

 

 

 

 

There was movement and voices from the other side of the door. Lucrecia clasped both hands across her mouth to stop herself from screaming, her face slick with tears. A dream. Just a dream. Just a… she allowed one hand to go to her belly, grasped at the soft space where her son used to be. More tears came, and she shut her eyes as tightly as she could, trying to make sense of where and what and how.

 

Hojo’s back was to her, leaving. She wanted to call for him, seek comfort in his stern affection. But it was too late. She had hurt him far deeper than he could have imagined. And he didn't even know. Voices. Someone young. Vincent and… the door shut, Hojo’s voice cut above the rest.

 

She opened her eyes, searched the room frantically for any sign of what was happening. Lucrecia made and attempt to sit but the moment her head left the pillow her vision clouded dark around the edges. She collapsed, dizzy and nauseated. Morphine, maybe. She tried to listen, make sense of the words that seeped through the cracked door.

 

Vincent entered slowly, left the door ajar after slipping through. He was startled to see her awake, threw a quick glance over his shoulder, laid his finger across his lips. He approached her cautiously, calm and quiet. Vincent sat back in the chair, scoot it closer to the bed. Her eyes were wide and wild, heavily glossed in tears. “Wh—”

 

Vincent stood and reached across her, a grab for a glass of water on the other side of the bed. He passed his lips over her ear as he moved, exhaled an instruction. “ Shhh… ” He sat back down, rubbed at a imagined flaw on the rim of the glass with his thumb, waiting, listening. There was still commotion in the hallway, but it seemed to be fading.

 

Lucrecia watched Vincent through a surreal haze, his fingers crawling along the outside of the glass. She wondered if she had woken up again, dreaming a dream. Vincent stared over the glass at nothing, listening intensely, thinking even more so. It must have been a dream. He looked so calm, as if he didn’t even realize she was awake. She could not feel her body, just a gentle soundless hum, a floating. She wondered if Sephiroth was still safe within her, a sleepy, disoriented hope. Lucrecia tried not to slip back into her sleep, terrified of the dreams that called to her. She blinked, gazed straight ahead, kept her voice quiet as Vincent had said. “Sephiroth…”

 

Vincent did not look at her, the glass still rotating in his hands.

 

Something wasn’t right, drugs or… “…Where is…”

Vincent waited for the outside door to slam shut and the resulting safety of silence before he responded. “I’m going to go get him.” His face remained unchanged.

 

“You let Hojo take him?!” Lucrecia would have slapped him, wished that she would have been able to conjure the energy. “You let them take my baby!?”

 

“Do you think that was easy for me? To watch Hojo walk out of here with my son, thinking he is his? To go do… gods knows what to him?” Vincent shook his head. “What was I supposed to do?! There were _five_ fucking Turks out there, I didn’t even know they exist before now! Or what training they have or— I wasn’t going to risk— what, should I have started a shootout in here?! What if you, or he… I was _scared_!”

 

Lucrecia lift her hand, ran her thumb gently beneath his eye, his skin soft and swollen. “Vincent… were you… _crying_?”

 

“Yeah. A lot!” He smacked her hand away from his face. It was the first time he had ever, in any capacity, been anything but gentle with her. His reaction frightened her, pit in her chest. And suddenly, her voice was very small. “Massacre?”

 

“ _No_. No, Lucy, not now.” He kept his eyes fixed on the floor.

 

Her uneasy fear turned to dread, the feeling that she had tripped against the roots of some giant inverted tree. More tears spilled, streaked down to her pillow, stuck in her hair.

 

“Why would they say that? What massacre?”

 

“No. No… no no no no. Not now!” Vincent stood, made a lunge for his coat.

 

Fear and a hint of revulsion had crawled into her voice, a confused, slurred tremble. “Vincent if you _did_ something… if this could affect my son… Did you…”

 

He pivot to to her, something feral on his face. “Yeah. I did. ”

 

“Why?! When?! Why wouldn't you tell me?!”

 

“Why?! Because it was a long time ago! Because I wanted to! Because I felt like it! Because I'm a fucked up monster and I always have been!! Because you knew what I did for the ShinRa! Because is there really a difference between killing someone for pleasure or for a paycheck?! Because the guilt of it eats at me every single moment of every single day! Because I love you so fucking much I didn’t want any of this… this… _sickness_ anywhere near you!!” He was yelling. Stupid and dangerous. “If it could affect 'my' son?! _Yours_?! He’s yours, isn’t he! He was never mine — or Hojo’s to you, was he?! But he _is_ , Lucy— of course it could affect him!! Why the fuck do you think I was so adamant about not having children?! I didn't even think I could!!"

 

Lucrecia had lost her color, involuntarily scoot back from him. The obvious fear in her enraged and hurt him the same. He took a deep breath, tried to calm himself.

 

“My dad. He was the most amazing, patient, loving person who did everything for me and I just…" Vincent did not mention his mother. "There is something _wrong_ with me, something broken.”

 

“No,” Lucrecia shook her head. “That's not true! You’re kind and sweet and gentle…”

 

“It _is_ true, Lucy! And just like everything else with you, twisting your perspective won't make it go away! Aside from the fact that experimenting on humans without their consent is wrong, I have a pretty good idea of what the ShinRa are going to do to him, _because they fucking did it to me_!!”

 

Vincent pulled on his coat, paced. “Except this will be worse. ShinRa doesn't want him to find mako, not long term! They call themselves a power company now because that’s where the money is! They’re a weapons manufacturer at the core and that’s why they want him — to make a _weapon_! I was just some fucked up kid— you’ve been pumping him full of who fucking knows what! Why wouldn't I tell you?!” He thrust his finger at her, tears caught along his lower lashes. He hated her, a love so white hot it circled around to the underside, hated her with something violent and consuming “Why wouldn't you tell me?!”

 

“…Vincent. _Please_! Listen to me—”

 

He paused, crushed by the look on her face, by her tears and her wide, stunned eyes. He couldn’t handle her fear being centered on him. Especially because it was merited. “I _did_ tell you. I told you I wasn't… a good person. But I'm not who I used to be! I don’t know anything else, but I know that. Not anymore. Because of you. You asked me once if I liked being a Turk. I thought I did! I also thought that the ShinRa _fixed_ me, and that I didn’t have a _choice_.”

 

He sat on the edge of the chair, bounced his knee, leaned into her. “…We _always_ have a choice.”

 

Lucrecia grabbed his hand, ran her fingertips over the bandage where he had carved a promise to her into himself. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave me.”

 

“I will never leave you. You’re my choice. Our son is my choice. I’m not going back.” He stood, pulled his gun from his belt. He grabbed her hands, wrapped her fingers around the warm metal. “You remember when you asked me to teach you how to shoot targets in the back of the house?” He sniffed back the sting behind his nose.

Lucrecia nodded, hated the thing in her hands, hated how it felt, how it looked. She held it awkwardly, uncomfortable and frightened.

 

“Yeah, well. You’re a terrible shot.” He let a small, lopsided smile through at the memory, something more precious in the veils of forever-ago. “Be careful, that thing is modded all to hell and— don’t let nerves get to you, be sure of who you’re aiming at. And don’t shoot me, okay?” He dropped his head, shoulders slumped, a severed marionette. “…At least until after I bring Sephiroth back and you two are somewhere safe. Then I guess it’s fine. …Just… let me do one fucking thing right.”

 

“Vincent. I…” Lucrecia reached for him, pulled his face to her own. She kissed him gently, lingered, spoke against the softness of his lips, the swell where Hojo had hit him. “Once we have Sephiroth… We can get Hojo alone, where everything is calm and… I can talk to him, explain everything and… you promised not to hurt him. Whatever you did before - you are a good person now. We can fix this. And we'll do it together. I love you. And I’m so sorry.”

 

 

 


	22. The Berserker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening - [ Blood on my Name - The Brothers Wright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz5Mx3a8kRw)

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

_The Berserker_

 

 

 

All of the Turks looked up in unison when the front door of the mansion opened. They haunted the foyer, restless and bored. Each of them watched Vincent with interest as he shrugged out of his wool coat, hung it neatly on the coat rack.

 

“You look like shit, man.” The Turk Vincent had identified as a brawler grinned up at him. “How’d you get out of suit duty?”

 

Vincent glanced to him from the side of his eye, let a quiet pause hang in front of his answer. “…I had a long night.” He folded his arms, took note of where they were standing, where they sat. “Shouldn't you be at the reactor? It would seem Professor Gast is missing.”

 

“Priority shift, from the top. We sent word back to headquarters that Hojo’s payload arrived. President got impatient and wants it, and Hojo, back in Midgar immediately. But Hojo isn't cooperating.”

 

Vincent rubbed at the stiffness in the back of his neck. “Yeah, he… does that.”

 

“Orders didn't ever specify _alive_.” The Turk shrugged, smirked.

 

Vincent’s response came harder than he intended, knee-jerk and severe, though if he spoke to them or himself was unclear— and didn’t matter much anyway. “Hojo will not be harmed.”

 

“Damn. You’re just as intense as they say you are. I was just _joking_.”

 

Vincent pushed up the sleeves of his thermal, the left cuff still crusted with dried blood. If anyone received orders to bring the personnel from Nibelheim back to Midgar, it should have been him. Unless things had changed even more drastically than it seemed, he and Veld still held rank. “I will escort Sephiroth and Hojo back to headquarters myself. The rest of you check the reactor.”

 

The Turk with dual guns was leaning against the bannister. “No, you won't. It's your lucky day. You don't have to waste any more time in this dump. President wants you in Junon, something about a new military base. Rendezvous with Veld. Congratulations Valentine, The Jenova Project is officially concluded.” The Turk pulled out a folded piece of paper from his inner chest pocket, handed it to Vincent. “Seriously, hope you get some rest soon, buddy. Looks like you need it bad.”

 

Vincent took the paper, examined his discharge instructions print crisp and neat on official ShinRa letterhead. Years of his life, a history that changed him, changed everything, relationships and rivalries, love and trust and hate, all reduced to nothing but a few formal sentences. He let himself laugh, one single, loaded release, when he noticed an additional notation at the bottom of the paper, an award of a bonus. 1,000 gil.

 

“Sign off, chief. Seems like we’ll be a while waiting for the scientist. The chopper just outside town can take you. Maybe when all this is over, we can go grab some drinks. Properly introduce ourselves since we’re co-workers now. Ah, whatever. You look so beat, don’t worry about that. Just sign on the line, and you’re free!” The Turk smiled.

 

Vincent’s face was blank. “Got a pen?”

 

“Yeah, here.” The Turk fished through his pocket, pulled out a ShinRa logo fountain pen. “Oh, and…” He grabbed a small leather folio from his chest pocket, held it behind the paper, a firm surface to write on.

 

“…Thanks.” Vincent rest the tip of the pen against the clean white paper, dragged it down and up, formed a dark inky wound, half of a ‘v’. The pen continued up, away from the paper. Vincent lodged it mercilessly into the side of Turk’s neck.

 

Vincent rounded his grip on the handle to the front, forced the pen sideways and out. A spray of scarlet spattered him across the face, erupted onto the stairwell behind him, a steady pump from the Turk’s opened carotid artery. The Turk dropped to his knees, stunned and choking, a death rattle.

 

Vincent spun to face the others, their weapons drawn. A thick band of red streaked from the left side of his jaw to his right eyebrow, dripped down his nose and eye, as mask of destruction.

 

The others charged him, front and side. Vincent’s grin lit his face, the glint of lust in his eyes flashed with the sparks of the rod that came at him. He slammed an elbow backward. The crack of him, or her or other and it didn't matter anyway. Just pain, no matter who gave or took.

 

The rod spit and bit sparks, a jolt that knifed up his back. The charge seared up his body, biting thorns through every spark that flashed through him. A siren call of pain rang in his ears. He staggered forward. A challenge.

Vincent had her by the hair, yanked back her head. The rod clamored to the floor. The terror in her eyes stoked the fire in his gut. “No, _please_ ,” she said, or something, something hopeless. Words. Just _noise_. Her plea was muffled when his fingers crawled between her teeth, pried open her mouth. Both hands. He ripped her jaw apart, let her drop. Vincent slammed his heel into the ruin of her face where she fell, and again.

 

_Stop_.

 

Steel molded knuckles cracked across his jaw. A hot metallic, salted taste, foul and fine. Hit so hard the world went black, but he laughed anyway. Blood spilled between his lips as he did, rolled down his chin. Vincent caught another blow to the middle. He used the inertia to gain distance. Long and lean and _kill, kill, kill_ —

 

_Stop_.

 

A mouthful of blood was spat into the brawler's face, disorientation. Vincent lunged, cupped the back of the man’s neck and forced the brawler’s face to meet his knee. Bone split, teeth scattered. Vincent kicked him in the chest, sent him to a backwards sprawl. A stray rod had found its way to Vincent, sent enough voltage into the downed Turk to seize and overwhelm his heart. He flopped and spasmed against the floor, a waft of charred skin, burning hair.

 

_Stop._

A glinting smile of a knife, from behind. Vincent caught the panicked swing. An easy parry. He wrenched the knife from the man’s hand, threw him off balance. Vincent unleashed his own strike. The blade bit into the man’s lower back, ripped up along his spine. The impact shuttered into Vincent’s arm, down into his chest and he shuttered too— love and sex and death. Formless and boundless. Mixed up. Fucked up. The blade came out with a spray; flashed across his throat.

 

_Stop_.

 

Vincent dropped the knife, glanced to the woman crawling along to floor toward the first Turk to die. She reached for one of his holsters, trembling fingers. Vincent ran; long legged furious strides. His boots skid to a stop against the wet marble, pushed clean the whorls of red. He raised his knee, lashed his heel down across the back of her hand, grinned madly as her bones crunched and popped, as he ground them against the floor. He didn’t even hear her scream.

 

Vincent snatched the gun instead, spun the trigger guard around his finger, a stylistic flourish. _I like fun._ He caught the grip, fired into the side of her head, a spray of brain and bone and blood.

 

One of the guns was missing.

 

Vincent snapped around, some feral thing. Tseng had hidden beneath the foyer console. He aimed the missing gun at Vincent, shook wildly. He was crying.

 

The soles of Vincent’s bloody boots squished against the marble as he moved to the boy. He walked slowly, a staggering lumber. He hoped the little thing would try to run. Maybe he’d even give it a head start. He would catch it anyway.

 

 

“ _I may be stupid, but I’m fast. And… it’s just a toy.”_

 

 

Vincent liked the idea of stalking the boy through the dark, dusty halls of the mansion. The only place that had ever felt like home. It was his place and his duty to protect it. For pleasure, for honor, for a paycheck, did it matter? Everything died. Died and came again, a ride on the spiral.

 

 

“ _I bet I'll always be able to outrun you, though. …That's not very impressive, is it?”_

 

 

The boy did not run. He shook, wide eyed with terror. And when Vincent bent, Tseng closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Vincent grabbed him by the wrist, ripped him out and up.

 

The boy hung in Vincent's grip, a ball on a string. Tseng went limp, too scared to move or speak.

Vincent twist the boy’s wrist, watched as his shoulder bulged, threatened to pop from its socket.

 

Face to face, Vincent exhaled sharp bursts through his nose, through clenched teeth. Blood dripped from his hair and chin, spattered out from the force of his heaving breaths. The sound of fluid dribbling against tile filled the quiet.

 

Vincent glanced down, to the piss that ran down the boy’s leg, splashed onto his shoes and pants. The thing in his grip was not a Turk. He was not an insult, not a threat to render him irrelevant. He wasn't there to hurt Lucrecia, to take Sephiroth. He wasn't Hojo. Just a boy. A scared kid. Someone’s son.

 

_Stop_!

 

Vincent’s face fell, nose to nose with Tseng. He wrenched the gun out of the boy’s hand, dropped him. Both of them were stunned into disorientation; Tseng by the wreckage in the foyer, Vincent by the chaos in himself.

 

Vincent’s brows furrowed, all of the pain he had let fuel him hitting at once. “Next time…” He emptied the bullets, let them clatter to the floor. He tossed the gun behind him, tried to catch his breath.

 

“…Take… the… safety… _off_.”

 

Tseng’s legs had turned to lead. Everything in him pushed him to flee, but fear had nailed him to the floor.

 

Vincent bent into the boy’s ear, whispered a warning. “ _Run_.”

 

Tseng managed to turn himself around. He sprint forward, spilled out into the daylight without daring to look back.

 

Vincent’s shoulders slacked when the doors fell closed, shut out the light. He glanced to the wreckage behind him, the blood that discolored the black and white marble floor, the bodies that lay in ruin, an array of unnatural positions, none looking human. If Vincent was not who he once was… why had it been so simple, familiar? He wondered if it had been necessary, decided that it was.

 

He hadn't killed them for sport. Nor for the ShinRa, his duty as a Turk. He had killed them to clear a path to his son, to the end of it all. No more carnage.

 

Vincent looked at the bodies, burnt the image of each into his memory as he staggered past. He knew where Sephiroth and Hojo would be. Lucrecia’s bed was still unmade and in disarray, which filled him with a profound sadness. This was the last time he'd walk through the ShinRa mansion. He made a silent wish that the whole thing would be burn to the ground, a tumble of ash.

 

Vincent pulled open the heavy basement door, looked into the yawning darkness that spiraled down the steps. No more killing. No more death. He would defend his family, but there would be no thrill in it. He would keep them safe— from all who intended harm.

 

And from himself.

 

 


	23. To be Human

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

_To Be Human_

 

 

Vincent leaned against the stone wall as he spiraled down the stairs, ignored the pain that shot through his side with every step. Broken rib, or two, or… probably. He didn’t care. Something screamed in his knee, the left, the knee that had served to cave in one of the Turk’s faces. He could feel the burns blistering across his back where the rods had stuck him. Once, he would have savored it. The proof in hurt that he was alive, the knowledge he could die.

 

 _The Berserker_ , went the rumors, the whispers. Not afraid of anything, immune to pain. But Vincent was full of both, a hurt for leaving Lucrecia behind so intense he felt his heart crack with every step, worse than the broken ribs or split knuckles, a shattered elbow. Fear, too, fear that he had been overindulgent, reckless with his own violence, that he had taken enough damage to impair himself. Worst case scenarios taunted him, and this time, for the first time, the mental images of butchery and gore aroused nothing in him but dread.

 

He kept thinking of Sephiroth, his tiny hands and ears, his sleepy, scrunched face. Confused and scared of the love that consumed him for someone he didn't know beyond a concept. Grimoire had long suffered Vincent's free-fall, but never wavered in his devotion. Vincent had held a quiet resentment over it, but now understood in a way that seemed fundamental, wondered how he had ever questioned it at all.

 

Lucrecia had called Sephiroth ‘her’s,’ and Vincent had done so too. Even Hojo. But Sephiroth was an entity of his own, his own person. And he had not chosen any of this. Vincent cringed at the realization the situation was entirely his fault. If he had refused her, kept their relationship professional… if he hadn’t believed himself incapable of having children, been more careful… if he had listened to her, listened to himself… the cruelty of the reality he had been the architect of the entire spiral was not lost on him. Every step he had taken had been in the wrong direction, and it was because of him that they were woefully, hopelessly lost. Intentions did not matter.

 

Vincent staggered down the dirt floor of the underground passageway, let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He stopped at the door to the basement library, the space Hojo had made into his private laboratory, listened through the cracked wood. Vincent reached instinctively for the gun in the holster at his hip, for a moment forgetting he hand neither.

 

Hojo didn’t turn to see who entered when the door opened. He was standing over a bassinet, his little finger in Sephiroth’s mouth. A thin tube had been taped against his knuckle, connect to a small vial tucked into his pocket, kept warm by his body heat. “Are you finished upstairs? I am having a great deal of difficulty getting him to eat, and your ruckus isn’t helping.”

 

Vincent stared at Hojo’s back and the baby just beyond him. The laboratory was as dingy as ever, with it’s damp walls and sickly pools of lamplight. But Hojo had set up a makeshift nursery in the gloom, the care in which he had done so apparent. Like him, it was practical and plain— but it was clean and comfortable. Vincent frowned when he noticed a small stuffed chocobo propped in the corner of the bassinet. That had not been an item of Lucrecia's— if it was, she would have shown him. She had made it a point to show Vincent the things she had begun to collect for Sephiroth's arrival. He had hated it, hated her for it. He wrote it off as his duty as her 'friend,' realized what it had meant. And now it seemed, despite the fight that burned in him to go home, too late.

 

Hojo removed his finger from Sephiroth’s mouth, grabbed the vial and shook it, now empty. He took his time, detaching the tape and tubing. Still, he did not look at Vincent. Hojo grabbed the baby by the ankle, lift his foot and held it still with one hand, pressed a blood lancet against his heel with the other.

 

“Hojo!” Vincent cried out when Sephiroth did, the sound maiming him in a place he didn’t know he had. He took a firm step forward. “You want to experiment on humans?! Experiment on me! Just get away from him!”

 

Hojo finally turned, nudged his glasses up his nose with a knuckle. “Stop _shouting_. I’m testing his blood sugar, you insufferable moron.” He made a noise of disgust when he looked Vincent over.

 

“It would seem you made quite the mess upstairs! Get back. Not that I could imagine you have any concept of this, but infants… especially preterm infants, have weak immune systems. You are covered in… what seems to be multiple bodily fluids. I assume most of it belongs to your packmates. Who knows what filth you have on you.”

 

Vincent lift his hands, scanned them, down his forearms and trunk, to his feet and back. He had not realized what a mess he actually was.

 

“And they were people like you, no less. Who knows what vile things they carried. You’d know a bit about that, wouldn’t you?” Hojo nudged the air with his shoulder, a gesture to a file atop his desk. It was Vincent’s.

 

“Chlamydia, HPV, gonorrhea, chlamydia again… and those were just in the year before you got here. Interesting stuff in that file, Valentine.  It would seem the majority of your department’s budget has gone to your personal supply of antibiotics.” Hojo smirked.

 

“…Fuck you.” Vincent spat, surprised at how deeply his truths suddenly stung.

 

“Interesting how you make it a point to be so clean cut on the surface. You are vulgar through and through. It makes sense, I suppose. Handsome, mysterious, dangerous young man in a suit and tie living everyday like it’s his last. Nowhere to return… nobody waiting for him to return. Nothing permanent. It seems glamorous, free. Live hard and die young.” Hojo turned around again, collect a droplet of blood from Sephiroth’s heel onto a testing strip. “I know enough to know how deeply you struggle to connect with others. Fill the void. Something to take the edge off. Do you remember their names? The ones you fucked? …Or the ones you killed?”

 

Vincent balled his fists, angry at Hojo’s taunting, and angry because he couldn’t. Not their names, or even their faces. Or even the number. Hojo’s words were cruel, but they were not wrong.

 

“So predictable. Until the loneliness gets to you. Until it stops being thrilling and starts being sad.” Hojo placed a bandage gently over the baby’s foot, smoothed it down. “Until you meet a sweet, exuberant, ambitious woman… and suddenly you feel like you’re home.”

 

Vincent’s voice was as threatening as it was pleading. “… _Don’t_.”

 

“Lu. She… She’s an interesting contradiction. She is as brilliant as she is stupid. She is so dramatic. Did you know that she had this nonsense notion of ‘saving herself’ for marriage? She said that relationships were a distraction to her goals. That it was easy to be a desirable woman, but nearly impossible to be a _respected_ one. That part is true in our world. And seeing that is admirable. But she also had some stupid love affair with the idea of… romance. Everything being perfect. A modern, strong woman forging the way forward, but tripping every step of the way on the lace of her own fantasies.” Hojo turned to Vincent, gave him a dismissive wave.

 

“Here’s the funny part. She knew exactly how idiotic and idealistic that all was. She cried when she told me, she was so embarrassed. And yet, she believed in it. Because she wanted it so badly to be real. A world in which she was both respected and loved. All along, she knew she could not be both.”

 

Vincent felt it, like a blade slipped between his ribs.

“Oh. You didn't know? In all other cases, I’d never speak to anyone about my wife’s intimate history. But I have a feeling you know she wasn't virginal when we married. She said she had been with… one other. Some cold hearted boy passing time in a gloomy old house. Maybe that’s why she was crying? She was so worried I'd be disappointed in her. That she had failed herself. That she was no longer worthy of respect. That she had been _ruined_." Hojo glanced over his shoulder, a look of loaded accusation. “At least you managed to scrape together enough sense to get a vasectomy. She has no idea how lucky she is you didn’t _infect_ her with anything.”

 

Vincent had promised not to hurt him. No more killing, no more destruction. Not anymore. …But she hadn’t said anything about himself. He felt the blade of Hojo’s words twist in his chest. For a moment, he wished the injury had been physical, and fatal.

 

Vincent steeled himself, took another step forward. “Here is what is going to happen. I’m going to take Sephiroth back to his mother. And you are going to stay away from them, now, and forever. I am going to burn this fucking house to the ground, and you will tell the ShinRa that me, Lucy, and Sephiroth died inside.” He took another step, focused on his promise to Lucrecia not to hurt her husband.

 

“And if you make a single move to stop me, I will execute you.”

Hojo’s dark eyes burned behind his glasses, but with anger or amusement was unclear. “How gallant. And foolish. You should recognize the stubbornness of that woman you seem to love so much. There it is; the love without _respect_. If at any point Lucrecia wanted this to stop she would have stopped it. And since you fail to grasp at the imperative nature of what we are doing here, here’s something your simple, brutish brain can…” Hojo drew a revolver from inside of his lab coat, aimed it squarely at Vincent’s chest. He cocked back the hammer. “We are scientists. Lucrecia understands the gravity of what we are doing. She made her choice. You will not interfere.”

 

Vincent almost laughed, wished to be the man who would have one final time. Hojo with a gun was as awkward and out of place as Vincent was in the laboratory. Hojo held the weapon ineptly, with both hands white knuckled around the handle, elbows locked straight. Vincent had seen many men hold arms like this, nervous and jittery, too overwhelmed to take a shot. He took another step forward, the muzzle of the gun now firmly against the nape of his chest. He would move slowly, grab the barrel, pull it down.

 

“She doesn’t want this, Hojo! She’s _scared_ , for herself and her child. And for you, too!” Vincent eyed the gun, contemplated disarming him by force, but he was so close to Sephiroth…

 

Hojo dismissed him with a shake of his head. “Delusional fever dreams. That hick doctor put her on morphine. She made every step willingly.”

 

Something twisted in Vincent’s gut, a stir of emotion so strong it almost made him sick. “Perhaps she did— but that child did not. I messed up. I made the mistake of letting you do this to her, but I refuse to let you hurt my son!”

 

Hojo’s face fell as the claim washed over him, left him red and hot where it touched. The scientist’s brilliance had always been a burden, isolating and heavy. The ability to see what others missed, to analyze unspoken data. And it was painfully clear— aside from his moral high ground protesting, Vincent had never interfered in a substantial way before. The Turk lived from the pages of his internal rule book, some silent code of strange ethics. Something had changed, and Hojo, blessed and cursed, understood this truth. His voice cracked, the lenses of his glasses fogged. “Your…”

 

Vincent began to flood with regret for his decision to confront Hojo unarmed. Muscle memory attempted to call his left hand to his empty holster, but he stopped himself. No sudden moves. Vincent spread his fingers, lift his hands to show his empty palms, the bandage on his left hand saturated red. “Hojo. I’m _sorry_ ,”

 

The gunshot echoed off the stone walls, off the beakers and glass and tubes.

 

Adrenaline absorbed most of the impact. Vincent staggered back a single step, dipped his chin to his chest to look at the hole in his shirt and the crimson that bloomed against it. He raised his eyes to Hojo, blinked away the surprise.

 

… _So this is what it feels like._

 

Vincent went to his knees first, then dropped entirely. When he tried to inhale, he felt as if he was drowning, an awful gravely wheeze. Hojo raised his foot, slammed his heel into Vincent’s middle. Blood bubbled between the Turk’s lips as he desperately attempted to breathe. His vision blurred as he watched Hojo’s legs turn away from him. Sephiroth’s wail was piercing, frantic.

 

He had failed. As a Turk. A friend. A lover. A father. He had stood idle as it all happened, observing every step, every turn in quiet, sulking objection. If he had only allowed himself to trust his instincts, his feelings…  He could have stopped it. Everything. _The Gods Themselves_. He formed a half image, some parallel universe where they had left when she asked him to, where the three slept in a tangle, warm blankets, skin on skin. He was so tired.

 

It wouldn’t matter soon. There was comfort in the creeping death, in the cold that embraced him. He would die on the floor of of the ShinRa mansion, the only place that had been home.

 

They had called him The Berserker, a nickname he had never been able to shake. Said he had lost his ability to be afraid, to feel pain. To be human.

 

They were right. He wasn’t afraid, and he didn’t hurt. He was tired, and thankful for the numbness of death that took him, erased all he had ever done, ever was.

 


	24. The Monsters Within

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested listening: [The Monster Within](http://videogames.ambient-mixer.com/monster-within--vincent-ffvii-)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

_The Monster Within_

 

 

Hojo scrubbed at his hands in the sink, rubbed his fingertips between his knuckles, slipped off his wedding band. If it had worked out how it was supposed to, the injection of adrenaline would soon take effect.

 

Hojo’s brows knit at the thought, at _if it worked how it was supposed to_. He was angry and sore he had been so careless, thought his variables had been tightly controlled. Hojo shook out his hands, wrung them against a cloth. Was this revenge, or research? He wondered where the line had been, between his love and lust for knowledge and for that of his wife. If any of it had been real, which was which. In the end, Hojo mused, it didn’t matter.

 

Vincent opened his eyes. The light was harsh, consuming. It had a coldness to it, amplified by an overpowering scent of antiseptic. Vincent tried to turn his face away from glare, but his head felt impossibly heavy, immobile. Instead he tried to focus his eyes despite the brightness, gritty and stinging.

 

Inhaling was a struggle, as if his lungs had sat empty for days, as if he had forgotten how to use them. When he tried to speak, no words came out, no noise. Just a sticky, empty silence. Vincent pulled in a long draw of a gasp, felt his lungs inflate. He formed soundless words, and when he finally spoke her name, his lips cracked. Old drool had pooled at the right corner of his mouth, dried in a crust down his cheek. “Lu…”

 

Vincent pushed through the stiffness to turn his head. Away from the direct light, the room came into a hazy focus. Some sort of surgical bay, white tiled walls, a sink, a gasket sealed door. He knew enough to discern the mirror that ran the length of one of the walls was an observation window. He had used rooms like this in Midgar to interrogate people, torture and intimidate information from them while ShinRa staff sat safe on the other side.

 

He forced himself to sit, dizzy and disoriented. His hair was full of sweat and grease, matted to his brow, stuck in the drool against his cheek. He tried to wipe a tangle of it out of his face, his movements clumsy and awkward. His fingers twitched without him telling them too, ached in his right hand. There was only numbness in his left.

 

Vincent fought the surgical blanket from his lap, raised his hands to examine them, something very, very wrong.

 

One was missing.

 

From the elbow down on his left side, there was nothing, his upper arm wound tightly in gauze and medical tape.

 

“What the… fuck?!”

 

It was a nightmare, a dream. It had to be. He had killed the Turks, went down the spiral steps of the ShinRa mansion. He had confronted Hojo… the scientist had seemed almost uninterested until…

 

Hojo had shot him.

 

This was no dream.

 

“Hojo!!” Vincent spilled off the table, staggered forward. He had forgotten how to move his body, every limb and muscle intoxicated with something he couldn’t identify. He stumbled against the wall, forced his way to standing, pound his only fist against the glass. “Hojo!!”

 

Vincent’s eyes went wide as he caught his reflection in the mirrored window, shocked him so badly he nearly fell backwards. His once mahogany iris’ were a bright, unnatural red.

 

“What the fuck?!”

 

His arm wasn’t the only thing that was bandaged. Thick, messy sutures cut across his skin, told a ghoulish story he didn’t want to know. His chest and torso had been wound in gauze as well. Vincent ripped at the tape, tore away the bandage to reveal a ragged bullet hole in the center of his chest. The position of it was most certainly a fatal shot… a lung puncture. He remembered the distinct feeling of drowning, and the horrible, rattling wheeze he had made as he tried to pull in air.

 

And directly over his heart, was the ShinRa logo. It had been carved into the skin of his chest, clear and deep.

 

“What the fuck did you do to me?!!?”

 

A light flipped on behind the other side of the mirror, revealed Hojo standing with his hands folded neatly behind his back. He let his eyes linger on the space Vincent’s arm had been, his left hand, marked with some primal blood oath. Hojo had taken the whole thing off in a petty indulgence. “Ah, you’re up. It worked.”

 

Vincent clenched his left shoulder, rammed the glass. The impact was feeble against the reinforced surface.

 

Hojo scribbled on a pad of paper, made a notation of the time. “I wasn’t certain this would work. I am pleased to see it did.”

 

Vincent made another hopeless bash against the mirror. “Lucy!! Where is Lucrecia?!”

 

Hojo seemed to be counting something, annoyed by all the yelling. “Nevermind that. Vincent, you have some visitors.” Hojo moved away from the glass.

 

“Where is she?!” His fist hit the glass again, hopeless. “Where is Sephiroth?!!”

 

The metal door hissed open, several people pushed inside. They were faces Vincent recognized immediately, even beneath their expressions of fear and confusion. Vincent stepped backwards, his footing unsure. He almost fell, caught himself against the wall. All of the people were chained at the ankles. It was clear that none of them were present willingly.

 

Hojo appeared again on the other side of the mirror, sat at the desk and leaned into the intercom. “You remember Emmett, the owner of the sundry shop. He let you use his truck. And… Mr. and Mrs. Steele, they own the inn. And of course, Doctor Areeda and his granddaughter, Senia.” Hojo jot down a few more notes, watched his specimen’s reactions carefully.

 

Senia stared at Vincent in absolute horror, her jaw slacked, terror glazing her eyes. She took a step behind her grandfather, cowered. “What is this?!” The look of confusion and betrayal on the Doctor ’s face was a torment all it's own.

 

Vincent held up his one remaining hand, fingers spread, the universal gesture of surrender. “…It's going to be okay… I won’t hurt you just… stay over there.” He tried to make sense of what was happening, devise a plan, but his mind felt just as inebriated as his body.

 

“You won’t?” Hojo snorted. “That is all you do. You destroy everything you touch. Nothing but death wherever you go. Lucrecia is dead, Valentine.” If the taunting was only a necessity, if it was beneath him, why did it it feel so healing? Hojo savored the pang of satisfaction, but only for a moment.

 

Vincent reeled. His vision went dark, though he had not closed his eyes. A high pitched, screeching thrum filled his ears. He doubled over, his motions not his own. He was moving, but not willingly. “No! NO!!”

 

The mocking anger in Hojo's voice was crisp and clear and deeply, deeply personal. “When you didn't come back for her like you promised, she shot herself with the gun you left her.” Hojo frowned at the thought, so stupid and wasteful and _dramatic—_ and all of the things that endeared him to her.

For a moment, Vincent could see again, a flicker between sight and blindness, between color and none. Tears cut down his face shamelessly. His throat was so tight he could hardly speak, hurt him when he screamed. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

 

Something in his body was stirring, an aliveness that belonged to a source other than himself. Thousands of voices whispered all at once, a chaos of words he couldn’t understand. Vincent staggered backwards, held his head in his remaining hand. “No!! Hojo!! What did you…”

 

“You had enough feeling in you to fuck my wife, but not enough for her to think it meant anything. She felt trapped and thus, played both of us.” Hojo checked the time again, made another note. It was working, but somehow the taunting felt tedious. “You interfered with years and years of work you can’t even begin to comprehend, betrayed the ShinRa and Veld, and are directly responsible for the death of Lucrecia. Gast, too, probably? And for what? Some 'cold hearted boy' indeed.”

 

Vincent fell to his knees, doubled over. He was splitting, from the inside out. He could hear the sound of his own bones cracking, feel the fibers of his muscles rip.

 

“Your stoic detachment cost her life. Emotions are a funny thing. Do you know how they work?” Hojo watched the Turk writhe on the floor, crying out guttural sobs of agony.

 

Flesh that was not his own bubbled up from within him as his skin split, dark and wet.

 

“When a person feels something particularly strongly, it triggers a reflex, fight or flight. Pupils dilate, heart rate increases. A relic of our ancestors. To give a physiological advantage to survive a predator. To run faster, harder, longer. To feel, Vincent, is to be.”

 

Vincent’s form was no longer his own— a hulking creature, fur matted in blood. Claws and teeth and such an unnatural shape bipedal but nothing human.

 

Hojo leaned back in his chair, rest his hands together as if in prayer. “It was a simple override of this response, the limbic system, plus some genetic modifications. You used to hide your feelings, dog. Not anymore. You feel, and you become. But now… _you_ are the predator. But you always were, weren't you? Gallant hero…?” Hojo grinned wickedly, despite himself. This time it was genuine. “You are but a _Gallant Beast_.”

 

The thing that was once Vincent lunged forward, smashed against the observation mirror, rammed it again and again and again. The force cracked the safety glass, but it did not shatter.

 

Until someone screamed. Until it baited the creature’s attention.

 

Doctor Areeda had spread his arms, took a protective stance in front of the others. Doing something was better than doing nothing. “Vincent!”

 

The thing’s long, low growl was loud enough to send a tremor through the floor, a rumble that made the skin beneath the Doctor ’s eyes quiver.

 

“Vincent, can you hear me? I don’t know what they’ve done to you, but I’ll help you if you let me!”

 

It turned it’s head to the humans huddled in the corner, opened its maw and roared; a terrible, deep call of something untamable, anger and hate and raw, primal hunger.

 

“You have a _choice_. You _always_ have a choice, think of what we—”

 

Claws spilled intestine in a single swipe. Teeth separated limbs, pitched parts across the room. It bashed its head into flesh, gored torsos, ripped and tore and rend until there was nothing left but a mass of devastation, until the white tile, walls and ceiling was spattered red, until the screaming stopped.

 

Hojo’s lips were pressed into his thumbs as he watched the mayhem, safe on the other side of the glass, unsure what to expect, even more pleased with what was happening. He watched as the massive beast dug through the people forced inside, particularly struck by the fact the Doctor had tried to say something, tried to _reason_ with it.

 

There was nothing reasonable in the creature, no shred of logic or objective, just mindless… senseless… death. It killed because that is what it was. An unthinking monster. Strength and chaos. And when there was nothing left to destroy, after it paced and growled and ate, its flesh peeled back and away, the creature revoked down into a familiar form.

 

Vincent lay among the carnage, curled in a ball. He shook violently, buried his face in his one remaining arm, his body racked by pain so blistering he couldn’t think. It felt as if every bone in his body had been broken, every fiber of muscle shred. Even his skin ached, barbs of hurt tearing at his joints.

 

Hojo stood, leaned in closer to the cracked glass. He almost laughed. For a man capable of untold damage, Vincent looked like a scared little boy all curled in on himself, stuck in the throes of some silly nightmare. This was better.

 

Better than the fragile, stupid, distracting thorns of something he had once considered calling _love._

 

Better than the sting of betrayal, so pointless in the scheme of things. An interruption.

 

Better than playing family in some impractical house, holidays and anniversaries and things that only meant something for the simple fact that they did.

 

Better than wasting time trying to balance. Better than trying to mourn something that was never really there. Better than admit that it indeed had meant something… only, and so simply, because it _had_.

 

Vincent would hurt enough for the both of them. In all ways, every way. Hojo was comforted by the way Vincent agonized on the floor, a vessel for his own hurt, messy and broken and senseless. “Good. Very good. Okay. Sequence number two. Ready Valentine? Try and control it, if you can.”

 

Vincent forced himself up, struggled against the blood that slicked the tile, against the disorientation in his head and body, against the loss of limb. It took a while for his vision to return, longer to make sense of the scene before him.

 

No human was capable of the destruction there. The faces of the people that made up their world were not recognizable. Not even the number of bodies was clear. Just a clutter of pieces, flesh and fluid. Vincent turned slowly, desperate to remain upright, searching for something, anything, to make sense. 

He had tried to comfort the young woman who had hugged him, treat his frostbite, helped bring his baby into the world, showed him how to hold his son. He told her that he wouldn’t hurt her… to stay back.

 

Vincent’s face contort when the realization hit him. He dropped to his knees, not noticing or caring about the tears that cleared the blood from his cheeks in streams.

 

Dog.

 

Rabid Beast.

 

_Monster._

 

Hojo moved away from the window, the intercom still on and idle, crackled with static. “You didn’t answer. No matter. I’m going to bring Sephiroth to you.”

 

Vincent’s chin snapped up, his look of anguish replaced by one of shocked terror. “ _NO_!”

 

“ _No_? Isn’t that what you wanted?” Hojo returned, his hands behind his back, frowning. “I thought you’d be happy to be reunited with your son.” Hojo took off his glasses, rubbed at one of the lenses with the corner of his lab coat. “Oh. That’s right. You didn’t _ever_ want him.”

 

The rage that had gotten Vincent off the ground pushed him forward on instinct, and he charged at the door, smashed against the metal with his left shoulder. He hit so hard he saw stars, made a dent. The pain in his body was so intense there was no room for more. He staggered back, prepared to ram it again. These actions did not belong to him. All of the years of training had abandoned him. All the grounding techniques, the ability to dissociate on cue. He tried to think of his friend and mentor Veld, the relief of his gruff kindness when Vincent was finally hand off to the Department of Administrative Research. He tried to picture his father, the weight and warmth of his hands against his shoulders.

 

 

“ _We’ll find a place for you.”_

_._

_._

_._

 

 

 

Vincent stopped himself when the door hissed open. Hojo took a cautious step across the threshold, holding Sephiroth.

 

Vincent froze. Even through the haze of adrenaline and wrath, he knew he was unwilling to risk an attack.

 

“Ah, see, you can control that temper of yours. How long will it last?” Hojo held the baby out at arms length, an offering to some dark nameless gods.

Vincent took a slow, nervous step backward, his bare feet squelching in the blood.

 

“Go on. Take him.” Hojo’s smile was static, confident in Vincent’s predictability.

 

Something in Vincent twitched, a movement that belonged to his body but not his mind. He continued to creep backwards, until he had pushed himself against the wall on the other side of the room. He braced against it, tried to stop the world from spinning. His voice was broken, a quiet plea. There was nothing threatening in it, no challenge. Just a desperate, fractured fear. “… _Stop_.”

 

“I’ll just leave him here for you, then. You can come get him when you’re ready.” Hojo knelt, lay the baby near the door. When he stood, he tucked his hands into the pockets of his lab coat. “I returned your gun to you, Turk. It’s over there.” He gestured to the procedure table Vincent had awoken on with a flick of his elbow. Vincent lunged for the weapon, spilled onto his knees. He dragged himself to the table, forced himself up with his one remaining arm. His hand was so unsteady and slick with blood he struggled to pick up the pistol.

 

“All this _drama_ and you don’t even want him. Lucrecia would be shattered to see how right she was about you. I'm not surprised. Lousy fathers seem to run in your family. Now you can fail your son just like your father failed you.” Hojo knew that would be a deep enough dig to do it, to stir up the ghosts and the beast to exorcism them.

 

Hojo turned, skulked through the door and did not look back as it hissed shut.

 

“No, no no!! Hojo!” Vincent had secured the gun in his grip, tried to aim it at the glass. He was hopeful that the damage to it was enough to let a bullet pass through, but he shook so hard even braced against the table he couldn’t aim.

 

Sephiroth didn’t like the harsh lights, or the smell, or the cold, hard floor. He started to wail, his piercing, frantic cries all the worse echoing off the tile.

 

The sound knifed up Vincent’s spine, sparked every nerve in his body into a wild frenzy. His eyes stung, a closing, claustrophobic dark, and the beginnings of change.

 

Vincent pushed the muzzle of the gun firmly against his temple, and without a hint of indecision pulled the trigger.

 

The blood that had pooled beneath him seeped along in a scarlet grid against the grout of the floor, spread out behind him like a banner. As if the blood had coagulated into a firm gel, it ceased its reach, sat in stillness. And then, began to recede. The mass of wet pulled backward along the tile. The bits of bone and brain matter pulled back too, a collection of a physical death magnetized to an unwanted life. The hole in the sides of Vincent’s head bubbled and blistered, tissue knit along itself, closed the gaping wound.

 

The fingers on the only hand that remained twitched, and Vincent realized, he was watching them. He blinked. Blinked again.

 

The gun lay to the side of him, black on white, useless.

 

Everything was the same as it had been moments ago. Sephiroth was still screaming. The light still hurt his eyes. And most cruelly of all, Vincent was still alive.

 

Hojo’s voice sparked over the intercom. “You are already dead, Valentine. You cannot die. Sequence two, successful. Immortality is a gift many have toiled their lives away for. You should be thankful.” Hojo moved away from the glass, rounded to the door.

 

“ _No!_ ” Vincent shout so loud something in his throat tore. The beast was coming, forcing itself to the surface, ravenous for control. “Stop!! STOP!!! Please please please, Hojo please—!! Get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out get him out _GET HIM OUT_!!”

 

Vincent was contorted in the corner, writhing, and weeping when Hojo passed the threshold, scooped up Sephiroth. “Very well.”

_Idiot. As if I’d let you lay waste to all my work._

 

Hojo carried Sephiroth across the hallway, laid him upright against his chest, pat his back in a gentle rhythm to soothe his crying. There was nothing fatherly or warm in his motions, just efficiency. Sephiroth did not need a father. And emotions… emotions were nothing but a distraction. Soon they’d be back in Midgar, and Hojo would have an entire staff on hand to do the things he’d rather not. Feed him, bathe him, dress him, hold him. Hojo knew he would be there for the things that _really_ mattered, to supervise. It didn’t matter where the child came from, only where it ended up.

 

There would be no sentimentality between them, no distractions. Looking backwards was pointless. All that mattered was the future, his great creation. And Sephiroth would be entirely of his creation, regardless of genetic noise.

 

Hojo almost realized that this was his punishment to Lucrecia, but the sound of the beast smashing against walls pounded away his introspection. “Nevermind that, it is simply noise.” Hojo dismissed, laid the baby on his back in a clear sided bassinet. “It will stop soon, and it won’t trouble you ever again.”

 

It did stop, the pounding, screeching, shattering. And once it was quiet, Hojo returned to the mirror, surveyed the damage. The beast had crumbled huge chunks of tile across the walls and floor, mangled the examination table, ripped apart the overhead surgical light. Vincent was standing in the middle of the room, even in his human form now resembling some rabid creature. He took a small, single step forward, collapsed. Vincent did not bother to try and get up. “I'm… going to…”

 

Hojo looked up over the rim of his glasses from his notes. “Kill me? You said that already. But you won't. Because if you did, that would leave you alone with an infant. I'm sure you've figured out by now why that is a very, very bad idea. In fact, you being near anyone, in any capacity ever again, is a very bad idea.”

 

Hojo tapped the end of his pen against his chin. The ShinRa would love to have their golden boy returned to them in such a state, endlessly  more powerful and horrible than before. But this was a personal project, a labor of love. He would keep his prototype, lock it away with everything it represent. A vessel.

 

Hojo passed through the door one final time, crouched down next to Vincent. “You did very well, Valentine. What is it that you want?”

 

Vincent stared ahead, at nothing, his face a slick of tears and snot and blood, his hair stuck in filthy coils. Gast had often affectionately called the Turk ‘boy.’ Hojo realized how young Vincent was, limp and broken against the tile, without his suit or his guns or his cold demeanor. Although his features were severe, there was something baby-faced about him, in his smooth cheeks and full lips. He would never age another year.

 

When Vincent spoke, he was unrecognizable as Hojo’s adversary, as anything Hojo knew or thought of him. There was no mask to Vincent’s voice, no bluff, no attempt to conceal. Just the raw, vulnerable honesty of a very broken young man. Hojo was probably mocking him, a trick question. He didn’t care. “…I want to go _home_.”

 

Hojo frowned deeply, retrieved a syringe from his pocket. He removed the cap, slipped the needle it the side of Vincent’s neck, took his time pushing down the plunger. “…Understood.”

 

 

 

 

†††

 

 

 

Vincent was terrified to open his eyes. But the smell of musty wood and old books told him of the ShinRa mansion, familiar and safe. It hint at the possibility of a nightmare, a flicker of hope that it hadn't been real. His entire body tingled, felt tight. He hoped to find Lucrecia sprawled across him, an awkward angle that had caused his limbs to fall asleep. For once he would have woken glad for her crashing his bed, and fuck Hojo, he’d kiss her full on the lips. And they’d leave, without looking back. He’d take her to Kalm first, find a way to contact Veld.

 

Veld had once told him that the way to a man’s heart was through his balls.

 

Vincent had always thought he had meant sex, an easy jab at Vincent’s womanizing. But Vincent realized that Veld, with his crumpled wallet photo of his daughter, and the guilt in his voice when he talked about her, had meant something entirely different. Something Vincent now understood. He could explain to Veld, appeal to his sense as a friend and father to help them… a risky move, but one he, in that moment, decided to take. It felt hopeful, a cautious optimism.

 

First, he had to open his eyes.

 

But it was no nightmare, and there was no Lucrecia, just Hojo’s basement laboratory, just test tubes and papers and instruments. Vincent forced himself to sit, confused and surprised by his clothing. Someone had cleaned and dressed him. He wore black leathers, a complicated mechanism of straps and buckles. Where his arm had been was another— a crude replacement pieced together of dark golden metal. It resembled a gauntlet, but thinner, sharper.

 

“It’s not the suit you’re used to, but it will keep you intact.” Hojo did not look up at Vincent. “From what I observed, your transformations are quite brutal. The damage your body sustained postmortem is permanent. New injuries will resolve.”

 

Vincent didn’t have it in him to respond. To feel anything but the weight of his new reality.

 

“The arm is a gift. To remind you of how much you’ve taken.” Hojo lift his eyes. “And I have one more for you. Actually, this one you can thank my wife for.” Hojo walked over to him, threw something across his lap. It was a tattered crimson garment. Vincent did not move to grab it.

 

“That was your father’s coat.”

 

Vincent knew what it was. His father’s wardrobe consist of mostly black, which made his heavy highwayman coat so vivid in Vincent’s memory. Grimoire was tall and broad and striking on his own, but the image of him, all black and red, ran its roots through the core of Vincent’s being.

 

“It’s less of a coat now, more of a rag.” Hojo walked to Vincent, picked up the cloak and tossed it around Vincent’s shoulders. “The explosion that killed him damaged it quite badly. Lu kept it, for some stupid sentimental reason. Now it’s yours. The mantle of failure.” Hojo took a step back, admired the hollow of a man who sat before him.

 

“It is uncanny how much you look like him. I wonder if Lucrecia fucked him too.”

 

Vincent stared at the floor, the tranquilizer still numbing.

 

“Up you go. Come now.” Hojo tugged at his arm, pulled him down off his desk. “I have just the place for you.”

 

Vincent’s drugged steps were slow and clumsy. He leaned against Hojo, silent obedience.

 

Hojo guided him just outside of his lab, back into the hallway and on into an unfinished cellar. The room had been used for storage, a scatter of large wooden crates and a long narrow box that looked everything like a casket.

 

“What does one do with an eternity when one can’t die? When the nature of one’s existence is an unfathomable, uncontrollable danger to everything?” Hojo let Vincent drop unceremoniously into the box, tucked the toe of his shoe beneath Vincent’s ankle and lift it over the side to join the rest of him. “This isn't new. Just different. Are you any more of a monster now than you were before? Hm. You have time to think on your sins.”

 

Hojo heft the lid across the box, grunt under the strain of its weight. He’d leave them all here. Lucrecia, Vincent, Gast… and Sephiroth, the son that was not his, the life that never would be.

 

Vincent did not protest. Nor did he move. There was no reason to. This was best. And, he realized as the lid slid over him, shut him into total darkness, _this_ was his place.

 

Hojo gave two successive knocks to the lid, a private, practical farewell. “Sweet dreams, dog.”

 

 


	25. [--end]

 

 

Out of control of a history untold   
[it begins with the father of sin]  
I walk alone in the garden of stones   
[I turn into the monster within]   
Life is too long for me   
Life is too wrong for me   
  
'Cause there's something that   
I realize   
That I miss being human   
I realize   
That I miss being human   
Not these lies

 

\--Awakening

   The Damning Well  
  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	26. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suggested Listening: [ The Fragile [PORCELAIN MIX] ](https://youtu.be/p9BbDP31XvA)

 

 

  


 

 

EPILOUGE

_Never Forgive Me, Never Forget Me_

 

 

Lucrecia’s lashes fluttered against nothing but white.The pain in her head was so immense she couldn't feel the rest of her body. She was certain her eyes had opened, but she could not see. She wondered if she was dead.

  
  


She wondered if she had become Vincent’s flower haired girl, memento mori, forever frozen in a photograph to be tucked away behind his sheet music. Safe and loved and cherished.

  
  


The pain that surged through her body was too intense for death… unless? Unless she hadn’t crossed over, hadn’t returned to the Lifestream. She wondered if she was stuck somewhere, some in-between place. If Vincent had forgotten and never dug a hole between the roots of some twisted old tree, buried some totem of hers, helped her return to the planet to be born again.

But Lucrecia did not believe in his Lifestream, some swirling spiritual tide. It was just mako, a natural resource like crude oil or coal. And she was not dead. Dead people did not think or reason or hurt in the deepest parts of their bodies and hearts.

  
  


The light was too bright, too cold. She blinked until her sight returned, until her eyes focused on the familiar shapes surrounding her. She was back at the ShinRa mansion, back in her bedroom, back in her bed.

  
  


She struggled beneath the blankets, crisp and cold and freshly laundered, kicked herself free. She had been dressed in a clean white nightgown, a pale blue sash fixed around her waist. Lucrecia grabbed at her belly, at the soft flat space Sephiroth had been.

  
  


Cold. It was so cold. Cold, and still. The downy light hair on her bare arms raised, her skin prickled. Her breath unfurled in plumes.

  
  


Lucrecia sat, then stood, then crumpled to her knees. Forced to the floor by dizziness and a weakness in her legs. She gripped the side of the bed, pulled herself against it. The room spun wildly, spun and rocked. She waited for it to pass, stood when it did. When she finally rose, arms posed for balance, her legs quivered. There was something off about the house in its absolute silence, it's stillness. She realized it was the absence of the omnipresent ticking of the foyer’s grandfather clock. The heartbeat of the house had been silenced. The ShinRa mansion was dead.

  
  


Lucrecia licked her lips, parchment dry. Her voice cracked, atrophied like her legs. “Vinc—”

  
  


She staggered to her door, fumbled with the knob and pulled it open, stumbled into the quiet of the hallway. Lucrecia swallowed, tried to call out again. “…Hojo?”

  
  


The only response was the creak of the floorboards beneath her bare feet as she moved through the house, searching for anything. “Gast…?”

  
  


A frigid gust hit her as she crept onto the landing at the top of the foyer, bent over the ornate banister to peer down to the first level. The row of massive stained glass windows behind her cast long blocks of light down to the foyer floor below, tint yellow and blue and red by the colored glass. The front doors were open, a rug of snow having been blown inside. She could see flakes in the light cut down from the windows, the snow surreal as it swirled inside the house, dusted the marble floor. “…Vincent?!”

  
  


Lucrecia pulled herself along the banister across the landing, crossed the long open hallway to the other side of the house, rounded the door to Vincent’s room. His bed had been made in that perfect way he did it, tight, tucked corners. Everything else was gone. She tore through his dresser, disoriented and panicked, looking for something, anything, other than emptiness. She tugged open his closet, expecting to see a row of neatly hung white dress shirts, and the familiar navy of his suits. There was nothing inside.

  
  


Was this another dream? It felt like a dream, the icy silent air, the cold dusty light. Nobody and nothing and…

  
  


Lucrecia caught sight of something beneath the bed, crouched to retrieve it. It was a plain black tee shirt, the sort Vincent wore for sleeping. She lift it to her nose, held it against the lower half of her face. It still smelled strongly of him, but old, stale. Her vision blurred behind tears as she clutched the shirt to her chest, rocked back onto her shins.

  
  


When she was a child, Lucrecia had been given a music box. It opened to reveal a mirrored interior painted to resemble a winter scene, a palace of ice and snow. In the base of the box was a magnet attached to a gear. When wound, the magnet circled beneath the mirror, pulled a beautiful carved ivory woman along the surface. The little figure spun slowly, circled round and round until the music died away, each note slower, further, until it went silent. Until the snow princess stopped her dance, frozen and forgotten until someone acknowledged her again, wanted her again, wound the box again.  

  
  


“ _ _Hellooooo__?!”

 

Lucrecia thought of the little ice princess alone in her palace, around and around and around.

  
  


“Professor?! Hojo?? Vincent!! Please!! Somebody! __Anybody__!”

  
  


She pressed a sob into the crumple of Vincent’s shirt, pulled away again. This time, her call was only a cracked little thing. “…Hello?”

  
  


The realization that she was completely alone felt like plunging through ice, a helpless struggle down frigid waters. Claustrophobic and hopeless and…

  
  


She stood, the shirt tight against her chest. Vincent wouldn’t leave her. He __promised.__ Lucrecia stumbled back into the hallway, made her way down the grand staircase. She paused at the bottom, glanced to the grandfather clock. The glass of the pendulum housing was missing, the ornate metalwork inside damaged from what appeared to be an impact.

 

Lucrecia walked to it, slow and careful steps. Hojo entered from the kitchen, a cardboard box occupying both of his arms. He wore a simple gray coat, a black knit scarf. Hojo looked at her, let his eyes linger for a moment longer than was comfortable, then continued to the front door without a word.

  
  


“Where is Sephiroth?! Where is my baby?!” Lucrecia spun to face him, confused and angry.

  
  


“ _ _Yours__?” Hojo smirked. “That is classified.”

  
  


Lucrecia narrowed her eyes. “What have you done?! Where is my son?! Where is Gast? Where is Vincent…?”

  
  


Hojo shrugged, nonchalant. “Midgar, probably. He was kind enough to deliver Sephiroth back to ShinRa himself. Got a hefty bonus for it, it seems.”

  
  


“No!!” Lucrecia ran towards him, still clinging to the rumple of Vincent’s shirt. "He wouldn't!”

  
  


“He wouldn't? He was obeying orders. A pack of Turks showed up to collect Sephiroth, and away they went. That is what he __does__. What was it I told you about faulting dogs for their training?”

  
  


“You’re wrong!! He wouldn’t leave me! He… promised…!”

  
  


“Am I? Are you honestly that __faithful__ in the word and morality of someone who kidnaps, stalks and kills for a living?” Hojo set down the box, pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket, worked it open with his thumb and held it under her nose. It was a copy of Vincent’s discharge form he had found in a bag belonging to one of the dead Turks. Vincent’s signature had been easy enough to forge.

  
  


Lucrecia shook her head so hard her tears broke away from her face. “No!! He’d never!”

  
  


“And why is that?”

  
  


“Because he… Sephiroth… he… __he__ …” Lucrecia didn’t even try to contain it anymore. Her face contorted, twist into forfeiture so forceful she lost her breath.

  
  


Hojo smiled softly, circled the wrist of his left hand with the fingers of his right. He bent into her, kissed her ever so softly on the wet of her cheek. His lips moved to the coil of her ear, exhaled across it. “It hurts being lied to, doesn’t it?”

  
  


Lucrecia dropped the shirt, a black puddle at her bare feet.

  
  


“Sometimes we think we know someone. And sometimes… we know nothing at all.”

  
  


He pulled away from her. “That box there,” Hojo waved dismissively at the thing he had set down, “you can have that, I suppose. I was just finishing up here, getting rid of the last of my things.”

  
  


He bent to retrieve a composition notebook, paged through. Hojo read aloud. “ _ _…And though you have had an incredible burden placed upon your shoulders simply by being, I will do my best to help carry that weight where I can. You are not just an invaluable asset to the world of science. You are my son.”__

 

Hojo slammed the notebook shut, tossed it to the floor next to Vincent’s shirt. “That whole box is full of these, Lu. Stupid, nonsense confessionals to what I thought was our child. I know myself well enough to know that affection does not come easily to me. You asked me if I would love him. …I never wanted him asking the same thing.”

  
  


“Hojo, I…”

  
  


“I spent almost every night since your early pregnancy writing these. I didn’t want to sacrifice working time in the day, you see. So while you slept, I produced these. Among other things. I also waste a substantial amount of time making living arrangements for us, in Kalm. It would have been a commute, but I knew it would be important to you to have a home. A house, with a white picket fence. A yard. A tree for a tire swing. It was not easy finding property that had all the features I knew you’d pine for. But I found it. We would spend most of our time at ShinRa, but we would always have somewhere to go home to at the end of the day.”

  
  


Lucrecia dropped to her knees.

  
  


“Even if were were unable to use it as a main residence, we would know it was there. Some illusion of normality. It’s all in there. The deed for the house. The purchase agreement for the vehicle. All trash. All yours.”

  
  


“Hojo I’m sorry, I— it was all an __accident__ , a misunderstanding-- Vincent didn’t… and you… you… Hojo, please! I wanted the best for  _ _everyone__ , I…”

  
  


“You were right about one thing. Your Turk had no interest in being a father. He refused to even hold his own son. Vincent report your escape attempts and theft of ShinRa property to Veld like the loyal dog he is. You have been blacklisted. Do not attempt to find Sephiroth, nor show your face in Midgar. I, like everyone else, misunderstood your ambitions. Your lust was not for knowledge. It was to be loved and accepted and respected. Funny. Now you are none of those. Goodbye, Lucrecia.”

  
  


Hojo turned away from her, walked forward against the grabbing icy gusts through the open double doors.

  
  


“No! Don’t…!” Lucrecia reached out to him in reflex. “Don’t… leave me—”

  
  


She watched as he vanished down the front steps, swallowed by the light.

  
  


Both of her palms hit the floor, the marble below spattered by her tears. “—alone.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


†††

  
  


  
  


  
  


Lucrecia’s hands shook violently as she tied the old worn rope, looped it against itself. Around and around and around, a little forgotten carved figure. She shook her hair out from the rope, placed a bare foot against the wood of the bannister, gripped her toes. She climbed to the other side, pushed backward.

  
  


She felt herself lurch as the rope lost it’s slack, as she plunged into darkness.

  
  


It was not a choking gasp of death that left her, but the horrible, ugly sounds of life.

  


 

 

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, an abundance of gratitude...
> 
>  
> 
> Gen, for her enthusiasm and pep talks, for help with the fiddly bits and for being such an encouraging, supportive friend-- helping me keep my own monsters in their box. Alice131 for being such a loyal reader and commenter and holding me accountable to actually finish this.
> 
> And Crim, who was my first _real_ fandom friend, who taught me that the feelings I have for fiction are valid and a resource to navigating reality. Who understood what it was to see a character as a 'truer' you, and who taught me I could put the parts of myself that I struggle so deeply with away in story. A dear friend who, despite living on the other side of the world and often going years without contact when I shut myself away like Vincent, I think of fondly and always. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [The soundtrack for this story ](https://8tracks.com/suchashame/the-monster-within)
> 
>  
> 
> Track Listing:
> 
> 1\. Down in the Lab - Renholder  
> 2\. Awakening - The Damning Well  
> 3\. Rev 22:20 (dry martini mix) - Puscifer  
> 4\. The Nightmare Begins - TPR  
> 5\. Mercy - IAMX  
> 6\. So Far Away - Stabbing Westward  
> 7\. Underneath the Rotting Pizza - DonutDrums Cover  
> 8\. Wasted - Stabbing Westward  
> 9\. Please don't Go - Barcelona  
> 10\. Blood on my Name - The Brother's Bright  
> 11\. A Minute to Breathe - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross  
> 12\. The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails  
> 13\. Non Entity - Nine Inch Nails  
> 14\. Never, Never - Korn  
> 15\. The Fragile {Porcelain mix] - Nine Inch Nails
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> I know that Vincent's limit break is _Galian_ Beast, not Gallant Beast. But I changed it to fit thematically, because, you know... fanwork.
> 
> Yes, there are MANY compilation canon breaking inconsistencies here, but the compilation of FFVII is all canon breaking to the original game. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Part two of this three part series is [A Cold Hearted Boy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9280250/chapters/21032600)


End file.
